1. in_ernet_dli_2015_173553_2015_173553_A-History-Of-English-Criticism

A

HISTORY

OF

ENGLISH

CRITICISM

THE

ENGLISH

CHAPTERS

OF

A

HISTORY

OF

CRITICISM

AND

LITERARY

TASTE

IN

EUROPE

REVISED,

ADAPTED,

AND

SUPPLEMENTED

BY

GEORGE

SAINTSBURY

M.A.

Oxon.;

Hon.

LL.D.

Aberd.;

Hon.

D.Litt.

Durh.

HONORARY

FELLOW

OF

MERTON

COLLEGE,

OXFORD

LATE

PROFESSOR

OF

RHETORIC

AND

ENGLISH

LITERATURE

IN

THE

UNIVERSITY

OF

EDINBURGH

WILLIAM

BLACKWOOD

&

SONS

LTD.

EDINBURGH

AND

LONDON

MCMXXX

P R E F A C E.

My publishers having requested me to prepare a separate edition

of the English part of my History of Criticism, which appeared

in three volumes between 1900 and 1904, I saw no objection

to complying. One of my subordinate (and not so very sub-

ordinate) objects in writing the larger book was to vindicate

our literature from the charge of being second-hand and second-

rate in this matter: and while some reviewers had received

the old prejudice too obediently, and with too little knowledge

of the subject, to discard it, others were good enough to admit

that I had made out no bad case. There can be no doubt

that, in the present drift of public opinion, an ever-dwindling

minority of students obtains the full liberal education of

Classics first, with English and Modern Languages to follow

in the natural order; but that is no reason why the majority

should be deprived of the meat they are prepared to digest.

At the same time, a reader who has no knowledge of ancient

criticism cannot understand the history of English; and one

who does not know something of the state of Italian criti-

cism at the beginning of ours—of that of French, German, and

French again later—will find himself constantly at a loss. He

requires, therefore, a new Introduction, to put him in a position

to comprehend the standpoint of Ascham and Gascoigne, as

vi

PREFACE.

well as much that follows; while there should be, in place of

the old Interchapters, shorter links of the same kind, giving a

brief view of the new influences as they came in. Those who

desire more light still on these subjects can, and should, consult

the larger History.

The bulk of the matter may remain unaltered except for

careful revision and correction of slips, obscurities, and the

like. If some such things have escaped notice I can only ask

for pardon.1

Edinburgh, October 1911.

1 Since this buok was in type, I have received, by the great kindness

of Professor Bouton of New York University, a full abstract of the rare

pamphlet on Fielding and Novel-writing,

(see Hist. Crit., ii. 497, note, or inf.,

p. 230, note). It is highly laudatory

of Fielding himself (with some gentle

strictures on morality, digressions,

&c.), but severe on his imitators and

followers, including Smollett. On

some general points of novel-writing,

and of criticism at large, the writer

is sound and almost original. The

piece is worth reprinting.

CONTENTS.

CHAPTER I.

INTRODUCTORY.

The documents of criticism when PAGE | Its plausibility PAGE

English practice in it began . 1 Its superficial, desultory, and arbi-

Earliest Greek criticism to Plato . 3 trary character . . . . 16

Aristotle—his great importance . 4 Others—Petronius . . . . 17

Drawbacks to it . . . . 5 Quintilian . . . . . . 17

Later Greek Criticism : The De In- Great merits of his work generally . 17

terpretatione . . . . 7 Interesting shortcomings in his judg-

Dionysius of Halicarnassus . . 8 ment of authors . . . . 18

The Rhetoricians . . . . 9 Later Latin critics of the Empire

Plutarch . . . . . . 9 and the “Dark” Ages . . 20

Lucian . . . . . . 10 Barrenness of the Middle Ages . 21

Longinus . . . . . . 10 Except Dante . . . . . 21

His principles and message . . 11 The De Vulgari Eloquio . . 22

The Gospel of Transport and the Criticism revived in Italy at the

rejection of Faultlessness . . 12 Renaissance : The strict Neo-

Photius . . . . . . 13 Classics : Vida . . . . 23

Latin Criticism . . . . 13 The innovators: Patrizzi . . 23

Cicero . . . . . . 14 French criticism : The Pléiade . 24

Horace—The Epistle to the Pisos— Earliest glimmerings of English . 25

its consummate expression . . 14

CHAPTER II.

ELIZABETHAN CRITICISM.

Backwardness of English Criticism | Hawes . . . . . . 29

not implying inferiority . . 27 The first Tudor critics . . . 30

Its cause . . . . . . 28 Wilson : his Art of Rhetoric . . 32

The influence of Rhetoric and other His attack on “Inkhorn” terms . . 32

matters . . . . . . 29 His dealing with Figures . . . 33

CONTENTS.

Sheke: his resolute Anglicism and

anti-preciosity

. . . 34

His criticism of Sallust

. . . 35

Ascham

. . . . 36

His patriotism

. . . 37

His horror of Romance

. . . 37

And of the Morte d'Arthur

. . . 38

His general critical attitude to Prose

39

And to Poetry

. . . 39

The craze for Classical Metres

. 40

Special wants of English Prosody

. 40

ts kinds: (1) Chaucerian

. . 41

2. Alliterative

. . 41

3. Italianated

. . 42

Deficiencies of all three

. . 42

The temptations of Criticism in this

respect

. . . 43

ts adventurers: Ascham himself

. 43

Watson and Drant

. . 44

Gascoigne

. . . 45

His Notes of Instruction

. . 46

Their capital value

. . 47

Spenser and Harvey

. . 48

The Puritan attack on Poetry

. 52

Gosson

. . . . 52

The School of Abuse

. . . 53

Lodge's Reply

. . . 53

Sidney's Apology for Poetry

. . 54

Abstract of it

. . . 55

Its minor shortcomings

. . 57

And major heresies

. . 57

The excuses of both

. . 58

And their ample compensation

. 59

King James's Reulis and Cautelis

. 59

Webbe's Discourse

. . . 61

Slight in knowledge

. . 62

But enthusiastic

. . 63

If uncritical

. . . 63

In appreciation

. . . 65

Puttenham's (?) Art of English

Poesie

. . . . 65

Its erudition

. . . 66

Systematic arrangement

. . 67

And exuberant indulgence in Figures

68

Minors: Harington, Meres, Web-

ster, Bolton, &c.

. . . 69

Campion and his Observations

. 70

Daniel and his Defence of Rhyme

. 72

Bacon

. . . . 74

The Essays

. . . . 75

The Advancement of Learning

75

Its denunciation of mere word-study

76

Its view of Poetry

. . . 77

Some obiter dicta

. . . 77

The whole of very slight importance

78

Stirling's Anacrisis

. . . 79

Ben Jonson: his equipment

. . 80

His Prefaces, &c.

. . . 81

The Drummond Conversations

. . 82

The Discoveries

. . . 83

Form of the book

. . . 86

Its date

. . . . 87

Mosaic of old and new

. . . 87

The fling at Montaigne

. . . 88

At Tamerlane

. . . . 89

The Shakespeare passage

. . . 89

And that on Bacon

. . . 89

General character of the book

. 91

INTERCHAPTER I.

. . . . 93

CHAPTER III.

DRYDEN AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES.

Dead water in English Criticism

. 105

Milton

. . . . 105

Cowley

. . . . 106

The Prefatory matter of Gondibert.

107

The "Heroic Poem"

. . . 108

Davenant's Examen

. . . 109

Hobbes's Answer

. . . 110

Dryden

. . . . 111

His advantages

. . . 112

The Early Prefaces

. . 113

The Essay of Dramatic Poesy

116

Its setting and overture

. . 116

Crites for the Ancients

. . 117

Eugenius for the "last age"

. 118

Lisideius for the French

. . 118

Dryden for England and Liberty

119

Coda on rhymed plays, and con-

clusion

. . . 120

Conspicuous merits of the piece

121

The Middle Prefaces

. . 122

The Essay on Satire and the Dedi-

cation of the Æneis

. . . 125

CONTENTS.

The Parallel of Poetry and Painting

The Preface to the Fables

Dryden's general critical position . 126

His special critical method . . 127

Dryden and Boileau . . . 129

Rymer . . . . 131

The Preface to Rapin . . 132

The Tragedies of the Last Age . 134

The Short View of Tragedy . . 135

The Rule of Tom the Second . . 137

Sprat . . . . 133

Edward Phillips . . . 138

His Theatrum Poetarum . . 139

Winstanley's Lives . . . 140

Langbaine's Dramatic Poets . 140

Template . . . . 141

Bentley . . . . . 141

Collier's Short View . . . 142

Sir T. P. Blount . . . . 144

Periodicals : The Athenian Mercury, &c. . . . 146

INTERCHAPTER II. . . . 147

CHAPTER IV.

FROM ADDISON TO JOHNSON.

Criticism at Dryden's death . . 159

Bysshe's Art of English Poetry . 159

Gildon . . . . 162

Welsted . . . . 163

Dennis . . . . 164

On Rymer . . . . 165

On Shakespeare . . . 167

On "Machines" . . . 168

His general theory of Poetry . . 168

Addison . . . . 170

The Account of the Best known English Poets . . 171

The Spectator criticisms . . 173

On True and False Wit . . 174

On Tragedy . . . . 174

On Milton . . . . 176

The "Pleasures of the Imagination" . 177

His general critical value . 180

Steele . . . . . 181

Atterbury . . . . 182

Swift . . . . . 183

The Battle of the Books . . 183

The Tale of a Tub . . . 184

Minor works . . . . 184

Pope . . . . . 185

The Letters . . . . 186

The Shakespeare Preface . . 187

Spence's Anecdotes . . . 187

The Essay on Criticism . . 188

The Epistle to Augustus . . 190

Remarks on Pope as a critic . 190

And the critical attitude of his group 193

Philosophical and Professional Critics 194

Trapp . . . . . 195

Blair . . . . . 195

The Lectures on Rhetoric . . 196

The Dissertation on Ossian . . 197

Kames . . . . . 198

The Elements of Criticism . . 199

Campbell . . . . 203

The Philosophy of Rhetoric . . 203

Harris . . . . . 206

The Philological Enquiries . . 207

"Estimate" Brown: his History of Poetry . 209

Johnson: his preparation for criticism . . . 210

The Rambler on Milton . . 213

On Spenser . . . . 215

On History and Letter-writing . 216

On Tragi-comedy . . . 216

"Dick Minim" . . . . 217

Rasselas . . . . . 217

The Shakespeare Preface . . 218

The Lives of the Poets . . 219

Their general merits . . . 220

The Cowley . . . . 222

The Milton . . . . 222

The Dryden and Pope . . . 223

The Collins and Gray . . . 224

The critical greatness of the Lives and of Johnson . 226

Minor Criticism : Periodical and other . . . . 229

Goldsmith . . . . . 231

Vicesimus Knox . . . . 232

Scott of Amwell . . . . 233

X

CONTENTS.

INTERCHAPTER III. . . . . 235

CHAPTER V.

THE ENGLISH PRECURSORS OF ROMANTICISM.

The first group . . . 246

Studies in Prosody . . . 273

Mediæval reaction . . . 246

John Mason: his l'ower of Num-

Gray . . . . . 247

bers in Prose and Poetry . . 274

Peculiarity of his critical position . 248

Mitford—his Harmony of Language 276

The Letters . . . . 249

Importance of prosodic inquiry . 279

The Observations on Aristophanes

and Plato . . . . 252

Sterne and the stop-watch . . 279

The Metrum . . . . 253

Shaftesbury . . . . 281

The Lydgate Notes . . . 254

Hume . . . . . 283

Shenstone . . . . 256

Examples of his critical opinions . 284

Percy . . . . . 257

His inconsistency . . . 286

The Wartons . . . . 259

Burke on the Sublime and Beautiful 287

Joseph's Essry on Pope . . . 259

The Scottish æsthetic - empirics :

The Adventurer Essays . . . 260

Alison . . . . . 288

Thomas Warton on Spenser . . 261

The Essay on Taste . . . 289

His History of English Poetry . . 263

Its confusions . . . . 290

Hurd: his Commentary on Addison 265

And arbitrary absurdities . . 291

The Horace . . . . 266

An interim conclusion on the æs-

The Dissertations . . . . 267

thetic matter . . . . 292

Other Works . . . . 268

The study of Literature . . . 294

The Letters on Chivalry and Ro-

mance . . . . . 268

The study of Shakespeare . . . 295

Their doctrine . . . . 269

Spenser . . . . . 296

His real importance . . . 271

Chaucer . . . . . 297

Alleged imperfections of the group 272

The Elizabethan minors . . . 297

Note: T. Hayward . . . 298

Middle and Old English . . . 298

INTERCHAPTER IV. . . . . 301

CHAPTER VI.

WORDSWORTH AND COLERIDGE: THEIR COMPANIONS AND ADVERSARIES.

Wordsworth and Coleridge . . 310

Coleridge's examination of Words-

The former's Prefaces . . . 311

worth's views . . . . 315

That to Lyrical Ballads, 1800 . 312

His critical qualifications . . 316

Its history . . . . 312

Unusual integrity of his critique . 317

The argument against poetic diction,

Analysis of it . . . . 317

and even against metre . . . 313

The "suspension of disbelief" . . 318

The appendix: Poetic Diction again 314

Attitude to metre . . . . 318

The Minor Critical Papers . . 314

Excursus on Shakespeare's Poems . 320

Challenges Wordsworth on "real" and "rustic" life . . . 320

"Prose" diction and metre again . 321

Condemnation in form of Wordsworth's theory . . . 322

The Argumentum ad Guilielmum . 322

The study of his poetry . . . 323

High merits of the examination . 323

Wordsworth a rebel to Lounginus and Dante . . . 324

The Preface compared more specially with the De Vulgari . 325

And Dante's practice . . . 325

With Wordsworth's . . . 326

The comparison fatal to Wordsworth as a critic . . 327

Other critical places in Coleridge . 328

The rest of the Biographia . 328

The Friend . . . . 329

Aids to Reflection, &c. . . 330

The Lectures on Shakespeare, &c. 330

Their chaotic character . . . 331

And preciousness . . . 332

Some noteworthy things in them : general . . . 333

And particular . . . 334

Coleridge on other dramatists . 334

The Table Talk . . . 334

The Miscellanies . . . 335

The Lecture On Style . . . 336

The Anima Poetæ . . . 337

The Letters . . . . 339

The Coleridgean position and quality . . . 340

He introduces once for all the criterion of Imagination, realising and disrealising . . 341

The "Companions" . . . 342

Southey . . . . . 343

General characteristics of his Criticism . . . 344

Reviews . . . . . 345

The Doctor . . . . 345

Altogether somewhat impar sibi . 346

Lamb . . . . . . 347

His "occultism" . . . 348

And alleged inconstancy . . 348

The early Letters . . . 349

The Specimens . . . . 350

The Garrick Play Notes . . 351

Miscellaneous Essays . . . 352

Elia . . . . . . 352

The later Letters . . . 353

Uniqueness of Lamb's critical style 354

And thought . . . . 355

Leigh Hunt : his somewhat inferior position . . . . 356

Reasons for it. . . . 356

His attitude to Dante . . . 357

Examples from Imagination and Fancy . . . . 358

Hazlitt . . . . . 361

Method of dealing with him . . 361

His surface and occasional faults: Imperfect knowledge and method 362

Extra-literary prejudice . . . 363

His radical and usual excellence . 364

The English Poets . . . 365

The Comic Writers. . . . 366

The Age of Elizabeth . . . 367

Characters of Shakespeare . . 368

The Plain Speaker . . . 369

The Round Table, &c. . . . 371

The Spirit of the Age . . . 372

Sketches and Essays . . . 373

Winterslow . . . . . 373

Hazlitt's critical virtue . . . 373

In set pieces . . . . 374

And universally . . . . 375

Blake . . . . . . 376

His critical position and dicta . . 377

The "Notes on Reynolds" . . . 378

And Wordsworth . . . . 378

Commanding position of these . . 378

Sir Walter Scott commonly undervalued as a critic . . 380

Injustice of this . . . . 381

Campbell : his Lectures on Poetry . 382

His Specimens . . . . 382

Shelley : his Defence of Poetry . . 384

Landor . . . . . . 386

His lack of judicial quality . . 386

In regular Criticism . . . 386

The Conversations . . . . 387

Loculus Aureolus . . . . 388

But again disappointing . . . 388

The revival of the Pope quarrels . 389

Bowles . . . . . . 389

Byron . . . . . . 391

The Letter to Murray, &c. . . 391

Others : Isaac Disraeli . . . 392

Sir Egerton Brydges . . . 393

The Retrospective Review . . . 393

The Baviad and Anti-Jacobin . . 396

With Wolcot and Mathias . . . 396

The influence of the new Reviews, &c. . . . . 398

Jeffrey . . . . . . 399

His loss of place and its cause . . 399

His inconsistency . . . . 400

xii

CONTENTS.

His criticism on Madame de Staël . . . 401 And defects . . . . 404

Its lesson . . . . 403 In general distribution and treat-

Hallam . . . . 403 ment . . . . 405

His achievement . . . 404 In some particular instances . 406

Its merits . . . . 404 His central weakness . . . 407

And the value left by it . . . 408

INTERCHAPTER V. . . . . 409

CHAPTER VII.

BETWEEN COLERIDGE AND ARNOLD.

The English Critics of 1830-60 . 425 His exceptional competence in some

Wilson . . . . 425 ways . . . . . 443

Strange medley of his criticism . 426 The early articles . . . 443

The Homer and the other larger His drawbacks . . . . 443

critical collections . . . 426 The practical choking of the good seed 444

The Spenser . . . . 427 His literary surveys in the Letters . 445

The Specimens of British Critics . 428 His confession . . . . 446

Dies Boreales . . . . 429 The Essays . . . . 446

Faults in all . . . . 429 Similar dwindling in Carlyle . . 448

And in the republished work . 430 The earlier Essays . . . 450

De Quincey : his anomalies . . 431 The later . . . . 450

And perversities as a critic . . 432 The attitude of the Latter day

In regard to all literatures . . 433 Pamphlets . . . . . 451

Their causes . . . . 433 The conclusion of this matter . 452

The Rhetoric and the Style . . 434 Thackeray . . . . . 453

His compensations . . . . 435 His one critical weakness . . 453

Lockhart . . . . . 436 And his excellence . . . . 454

Difficulty with his criticism . . 436 #Blackwood in 1849 on Tennyson . 455

The Tennyson review not his . . 436 George Brimley . . . . 457

On Coleridge, Burns, Scott, and His Essay on Tennyson . . . 458

Hook . . . . . 437 His other work . . . . 460

His general critical character . . 438 His intrinsic and chronological im-

Hartley Coleridge . . . . 438 portance . . . . . 461

Forlorn condition of his criticism . 438 "Gyas and Cloanthus" . . . 461

Its quality . . . . 439 Milman, Croker, Hayward . . 462

Defects . . . . . 439 Sydney Smith, Senior, Helps . . 462

And examples . . . . 440 Elwin, Lancaster, Hannay . . 463

Maginn . . . . . 440 Dallas . . . . . 464

His parody-criticisms . . . 441 The Poetics . . . . . 464

And more serious efforts . . . 441 The Gay Science . . . . 465

Macaulay . . . . . 443 Others : J. S. Mill . . . . 467

CHAPTER VIII.

ENGLISH CRITICISM FROM 1860-1900.

Matthew Arnold : one of the greater The Preface of 1853 . . . 470

critics . . . . . 468 Analysis of it . . . . 470

His position defined early . . 469 And interim summary of its gist . 473

CONTENTS.

Contrast with Dryden

. . . 473 Pater

Chair-work at Oxford, and contributions to periodicals

. . 474 His frank Hedonism

. . 498

On Translating Homer . . . 475 His polytechny and his style . . 498

"The grand style". . . 475 His formulation of the new critical

attitude . . . 499

Discussion of it . . . 476 The Renaissance . . . 499

The Study of Celtic Literature . . 479 Objections to its process . . 500

Its assumptions . . . 480 Importance of Marius the Epicurean

500

The Essays: their case for Criticism 480 Appreciations and the Guardian

Essays

Their examples thereof . . 482 . . . 501

The latest work . . . 483 Universality of his method . . 504

The Introduction to Ward's English

Poets . . . 484 J. A. Symonds . . . 504

"Criticism of Life" . . 484 Thomson ("B. V.") . . . 505

Poetic Subject or Poetic Moment . 485 William Minto . . . 506

Arnold's accomplishment and posi-

tion as a critic . . . 487 H. D. Traill . . . 507

The Carlylians . . . 490 His critical strength . . 508

Kingsley. . . 491 On Sterne and Coleridge . . 508

Froude . . . 492 Essays on Fiction . . . 509

Ruskin . . . 492 "The Future of Humour" . . 509

G. H. Lewes . . . 493 Others: Mansel, Venables, Stephen,

Lord Houghton, Pattison, Church,

&c. . . . 510

His Principles of Success in Litera-

ture . . . 493 Patmore . . . 511

His Inner Life of Art . . 495 Edmund Gurney . . . 512

Bagehot . . . 495 The Power of Sound . . . 512

R. H. Hutton . . . 496 Tertium Quid. . . . 513

His evasions of literary criticism . 497

CONCLUSION . . . . . 515

APPENDIX.

THE OXFORD CHAIR OF POETRY.

The holders . . . 525 The Occasional [English] Papers . 532

Eighteenth-century minors . . 526 The Prælections . . . 532

Lowth . . . 527 Garbett . . . 535

Hurdís . . . 527 Claughton . . . 536

The rally: Copleston . . 528 Doyle . . . 536

Conybeare . . . 530 Shairp . . . 537

Milman . . . 530 Palgrave . . . 538

Keble . . . 531 Salutantur vivi . . . 539

BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE.

Besides the books on special authors, periods, and subjects which will be found mentioned in the footnotes, the following general works of reference may be tabulated here :-

(By the present writer.) A History of Criticism and Literary Taste in Europe. 3 vols. Edinburgh and London, 1900-1904. The matrix of this present volume.

(By the same.) Loci Critici. Boston, U.S.A., and London, 1903.

Gayley and Scott. Introduction to the Methods and Materials of Literary Criticism. Boston, U.S.A., 1899.

Théry. Histoire des Opinions Littéraires. Paris, ed. 2, 1849.

Egger. Essai sur l'Histoire de la Critique chez les Grecs. Paris., ed. 3, 1887.

Spingarn. History of Literary Criticism in the Renaissance. New York, 1899.

A HISTORY OF ENGLISH CRITICISM.

CHAPTER I.

INTRODUCTORY.

THE DOCUMENTS OF CRITICISM WHEN ENGLISH PRACTICE IN IT BEGAN — EARLIEST GREEK CRITICISM TO PLATO—ARISTOTLE : HIS GREAT IMPORTANCE—DRAWBACKS TO IT — LATER GREEK CRITICISM : THE ‘DE INTERPRETATIONE’—DIONYSIUS OF HALICARNASSUS — THE RHETORICIANS — PLUTARCH — LUCIAN — LONGINUS — HIS PRINCIPLES AND MESSAGE — THE GOSPEL OF TRANSPORT AND THE REJECTION OF FAULTLESSNESS — PHOTIUS — LATIN CRITICISM — CICERO — HORACE : THE ‘EPISTLE TO THE PISOS’: ITS CONSUMMATE EXPRESSION — ITS PLAUSIBILITY — ITS SUPERFICIAL, DESULTORY, AND ARBITRARY CHARACTER — OTHERS : PETRO-NIUS — QUINTILIAN — GREAT MERITS OF HIS WORK GENERALLY — INTERESTING SHORTCOMINGS IN HIS JUDGMENT OF AUTHORS — LATER LATIN CRITICS OF THE EMPIRE AND THE “DARK” AGES—BARRENNESS OF THE MIDDLE AGES—EXCEPT DANTE — THE ‘DE VULGARI ELOQUIO’— CRITICISM REVIVED IN ITALY AT THE RENAISSANCE : THE STRICT NEO-CLASSICS : VIDA — THE INNOVATORS : PATRIZZI —FRENCH CRITICISM—THE ‘PLÉIADE’—EARLIEST GLIMMERINGS OF ENGLISH.

When English literary criticism came (under the conditions and circumstances to be stated in the next chapter) into an existence, tardy indeed, but not so very much tardier than criticism in other modern languages, the subject itself was, of course, a very old one.

But though the documents of it, as a critic of the mid-sixteenth century might know them, covered something like two thousand years in dates of composition, they were by no means evenly spread over that period. For about half of it, indeed—say, roughly, the space covered by the “Dark” and “Middle” Ages only, from a little after 500 A.D. to a little before 1500—they were almost non-existent; the few important exceptions will be noted later.

But for seven

A

2

ENGLISH CRITICISM.

or eight hundred continuous years, at least, in Greek and Latin

literature, they were abundant and various, while for some

forty or fifty years, at least, before the time of our English

beginning, they had been and were being produced in Italy.

Now classical literature was, in the opinion of every scholar of

the sixteenth century, the absolute canon of literature gener-

ally; and Italian was the modern literature which was

chiefly attracting subordinate study. Had not the labours of

Renaissance scholars and the printing-press together made

study of the classics not merely fashionable and almost imper-

ative but comparatively easy, English criticism might still

have lingered. Had not the Italians taken the subject up so

vigorously, it is certain that some—though it may be matter

of question how much—stimulus would have been lacking to

the prosecution of the new art.

But the Italians themselves, though they deviated more

widely than they knew, or intended from classical principles

in some respects, never, at first, failed to start from the

classics. The “Ancient and Modern Quarrel”1 did not arise

till the close of the sixteenth century or the beginning of

the next; and though men of intelligence (see the latter part

of this chapter) might be pretty early forced to acknowledge

that there were kinds of modern literature to which, inasmuch

as they had not existed in ancient times, ancient rules did

not apply, they themselves did not for some generations pro-

ceed to question the authority of these ancient rules in them-

selves. And in hardly any respect did the classical researches

and classical discoveries of the Renaissance provide so much

new matter, and treat it in so novel a fashion, as in regard to

the critical department of Greek and Latin letters. Idolised as

Aristotle had been in the Middle Ages, the Poetics had been

less studied than any other of his works, and the Rhetoric had

been obscured by later compilations. Plato had been little read,

and lay under suspicion of heresy. The great critic who is

usually called (and quite possibly was) Longinus, seems to have

been known to Greek contemporaries of Dante: but he exer-

cised no influence in the West till Robortelli printed him in

1 V. inf., in the chapters concerning these centuries.

mid-sixteenth century. The Greek rhetoricians were first made

accessible by Aldus. Horace had never been a very popular

author in the Middle Ages, and with their knowledge of class-

ical literature, it was hardly possible to perceive the drift of the

Epistle to the Pisos. Quintilian was not completely known till

the beginning of the fifteenth century. But now all these and

others were eagerly studied, and a department of intellectual

exercise, which had before been absolutely unknown, or casu-

ally glimpsed only by men of the highest genius like Dante

and Chaucer, lay open. It was promptly occupied as far as

its ancient subjects went; and the exercise was almost as

promptly turned in application to the new literatures them-

selves.

The work so long neglected, and at last so greedily studied,

had certain general characteristics, not all of which were

Earliest equally applicable to the criticism of the newer

Greek criti- literatures. From a very early time it would seem

cism to that the restless intellect of the Greeks had de-

Plato. voted itself to the subject, especially in reference

to the great national treasure of the Homeric poems. But—

very mainly owing, no doubt, to the absence of any other

literature for comparison—this study directed itself, as far as

the few and fragmentary remains of it that we possess go, to

questions of matter chiefly, and especially to the rather

dangerous division of allegorical interpretation. The growth

of oratory, however, and its political importance in the small

Greek communities, made technical analysis of “Rhetoric,” and

instruction in it, a necessity. Rhetoric as necessarily involves,

and sometimes becomes almost identical with, Criticism, and as

the body of creative literature itself increased, it was impossible

that the Greek mind should not busy itself with that liter-

ature’s forms and general phenomena. But neither the

Socrates of Plato nor the Socrates of Xenophon gives us the

idea of a man who would pay much attention to literary

criticism proper: all the more so because “the enemy”—the

Sophist—was, as a rule, a professional teacher of something

like it. And Plato himself, though one of the very greatest

men of letters of all time, and possessed of an intensely subtle

ENGLISH CRITICISM.

id powerful mind as well as of the keenest appreciation of

zauty, either caught from his master or developed for him-

lf a positive aversion to poetry-then practically the only

iginal part of literature-as deceptive to the individual and

sastrous to the State. He in fact expresses, for the first

me, the curious mental attitude of distrust towards the pro-

ictions of great human art. And this has always held sway

rer a large part of mankind since, though it has been expressed

g persons holding points of view so different from Plato's and

om each other's as those of all the Fathers of the Church and

ome later orthodox theologians on the one side, and as the

ollard and Puritan sectaries, with their English descendants,

1 the other.

But if the greatest pupil of Socrates followed his master in a

irection antipathetic to criticism, the greatest pupil of Plato

ristotle— did not pursue a similar course. Despite his

s great im- ethical preoccupations, there is in Aristotle-if we

ntance. except, perhaps, his attitude to Comedy and to mere

yle-no sign of contempt or distrust in respect of literature.

he object of Poetry is to please by "imitating" nature; the

ject of Oratory (hardly any other division of prose was yet

sally recognised) is to "persuade," but persuasion is largely

fected by the appropriate selection and arrangement of words.

1 the Poetics and the Rhetoric we get these general principles

aborated and applied after a fashion which laid down once for

1 some of the greatest doctrines of criticism. The adequacy,

not the accuracy, of his famous definition of tragedy, to be

und below,1 is still, and always must be, matter of controversy;

d so also must be his assignment of overpowering preponder-

ace to the "fable" or "action," his comparative depreciation

: character, and the like. But, on the other hand, the widest

anges of style in drama have only established more solidly

1 "Tragedy is an imitation of some

tion that is serious, entire, and of

me magnitude, by language em-

lished and rendered pleasurable,

it by different means in different

rts-in the way, not of narration,

it of action, effecting through pity

and terror the purgation of such [al.

'these'] passions." On the diffi-

culties of the word "purgation," and

indeed on the whole subject, see-

Butcher, Aristotle's Theory of Poetry

and Fine Art, 3rd ed. London, 1902.

his doctrine that the essence of tragic situation consists, not so

much in crime or in mere misfortune as in a certain "failing"

or "frailty,"1 perhaps not very bad in itself, but leading in

some cases to crime, in all to misfortune. Such, again, is his

recognition—constantly forgotten but essential to real criticism

—that each literary kind, if not each literary production, has

its "peculiar pleasure,"2 which, and which only, you are

entitled to demand from it. While in prose criticism, among

many other notable dicta, he has, in the same way, once for all

established the distinction between "staple"3 words,

which provide clearness and perspicuity, "foreign" or "strange"

words, which strike, affect, and elevate. Already we find in

him that irreconcilable objection to "frigidity," bombast, &c.,

which distinguishes all ancient criticism; while sometimes he

flies higher and achieves a great philosophical as well as critical

truth, in opposition to Plato, by declaring that poetry is more

really "philosophical" than history, and that a probable impos-

sibility can be more artistic and satisfactory than a possibility

which is not made probable.

But great as the advance apparently made by Aristotle was;

fundamental as (in a manner) his work must always be;

almost imperative as it is that some direct know-

Drawbacks to it. ledge of that work should precede any inquiries into

the later criticism which sometimes directly rests

on him and always touches questions first, as far as is known,

by him mooted—there are two grave drawbacks, each of which

has done harm almost to the present day. The first arises

from the fact that, careful and philosophical as was Aristotle's

induction, it was almost inevitably based upon existing Greek

literature only, and is in fact based, in so far as we have it, not

even on the whole of that. When Dryden (v. inf.) said that

"if Aristotle had seen ours [i.e., our form of tragedy] he might

have changed his mind," he not only hit a fatal blow against part,

but made a damaging innuendo against the whole of the great

Stagirite's criticism. When Aristotle wrote he had before him

abundant supplies of a certain kind of Tragedy and of a certain

kind of Comedy;

1 ἁμαρτία. 2 οἰκεία ἡδονή. 3 κύρια and ξένα.

strict in one way and that of the comedy unnecessarily loose in

another. He had plenty of Epic, which unfortunately we have

not got, though we have the most important pieces; but most

of this epic again appears to have been of one type only. He

had great lyric—some of the greatest in the world's literature;

but he says little about it, and one somehow gathers that he would

not have set it very high. He had again some, if not much, of

the very greatest history in the world: you can hardly go

beyond Thucydides in one direction; beyond Herodotus, and

perhaps even Xenophon, in another. But he deals with it,

directly, not at all. Worst of all, he probably had nothing that

can properly be called prose fiction—a few short tales, “mimes,”

&c., being the only possible exceptions. From this came the

disproportionate importance that he ascribes in poetry to the

mere fiction, the mere “imitation,” as if it and nothing else were

poetry. He is, in fact, dealing with a literature magnificent

in partial accomplishment, but not (to use an excellent phrase

of De Quincey's) “fully equipped,” and he is not dealing even

with the whole of what that literature gives him. Hence at

least a risk of error as to things that he sees, and almost

certainly of deception when his dealings are applied to other

things which he had not seen.

The other drawback—one which may not at first seem to

have much connection with the first, but which really works

together with it, disadvantageously, on nearly all ancient

criticism—is that Aristotle never, as a matter of fact, gives us

what in modern terms may be called an “appreciation” of a

single book, much less of a single author. We may find refer-

ences to books and authors, but they are always incidental and

illustrative, never thorough-going and all-embracing. It is

“the kind” in poetry, the several devices of the craft in

rhetoric, wherein he is interested. It is true that he never—he

was both too much of a philosopher and too much of a critic

to do so, even if he had not, by date and circumstance,

been spared such temptation—pushes this system, of

criticism by kinds or title-labels, to the damnatory extreme

of the neo-classics, who falsely alleged his principles in the

seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. But he goes near to it

sometimes, and the negative fault of nowhere giving a real

critical estimate of play or poem, of poet or prose - writer,

attaches itself to him throughout. And this drawback pursues

ancient criticism: with some exceptions, it is never entirely

removed. Dionysius of Halicarnassus to some extent, Quintilian

(perhaps relying on Dionysius), and Longinus most of all, are

exceptions, but they are almost the only ones of importance.

Now even Johnson, no Romantic or rebel to the Classics, added to

the title of his projected but never written History of Criticism

the words, as it relates to Judging of Authours ; and there can

be little doubt that this judging of "authors" and of books,

sometimes as preliminary to such judgment, sometimes as

sufficient in itself, is the most profitable and the most pleasant

part of the whole matter, if it is not even that matter's whole

end and aim.

The order of descent by pupilship is said to have been further

illustrated in the case of Theophrastus, the chief

Later Greek disciple of Aristotle, in regard to criticism; but the

criticism: few and well-known remains which we have of his

The De work do not touch the subject. He has, however,

Interpretatione. been credited with the useful but tolerably

obvious division of styles into ornate, plain, and

middle. Nor have we much representing the later Greek age

before Christ.1 There are, however, two exceptions of note-

the book usually called De Interpretatione,2 but more boldly

re - christened by its latest and best editor and translator,

Professor Roberts, On Style.3 Perhaps this is going a little

too far, and "Of Expression" would be the best rendering.

It is practically a rhetorical treatise on "Composition," now

busying itself about very simple points of an almost schoolboy

kind, now ascending higher. But it seldom touches on really

critical questions, and still more seldom on criticism of partic-

ular books and authors. It used to be attributed to Demetrius

the Phalerean, a man famous both in letters and politics, and

it would so have come not much later than Aristotle himself.

1 All, or at least most, of what 2 Περὶ ἑρμηνείας.

there is will be duly found discussed 3 Cambridge, 1902.

in the larger History of Criticism.

ENGLISH CRITICISM.

but it is pretty certainly Alexandrian, though the practically

common " name "Demetrius" has been kept for its author.

he busy literary courtiers of the Ptolemies must have dealt

argely with critical matters : it seems certain that the original

uggestor of the doctrines of Horace's Epistle to the Pisos

ras a certain Neoptolemus of Parium, also Alexandrian; but

re have no solid remains even of the grammarians and textual

ritics who made Alexandria so famous.1

On the other hand, the works by or ascribed to Dionysius

f Halicarnassus, a teacher of rhetoric and historian who lived

Dionysius at Rome from 50 B.C. to 7 B.C., are of the greatest

yf Halicar- interest and importance, and rank with those of

nassus. Aristotle and Longinus as furnishing the chief

storehouse of Greek criticism proper.2 The remarks of

lionysius on style and composition generally show much

iginality, and we have from him the first distinct acknow-

idgment of the immense importance of actual words, even of

etual letters. But he is almost of more value as giving us

etailed examinations of critical writers, some at length, as

: Plato, Thucydides, and Demosthenes, others more frag-

entary but precious, inasmuch as some of them are on

uthors now lost.3

It does not matter that these estimates are sometimes

jured by the tendency of all times to regard, and be guided

f, sympathy with substance rather than appreciation of form,

id by the special parochialism of the Greeks. This leads

ionysius, as a Halicarnassian, to exalt Herodotus, his towns-

an, at the expense of Thucydides ; just as it later led

lutarch, a Bœotian, to depreciate Herodotus as too little

vourable to his countrymen. We cannot be too grateful to

ionysius for such observations--truisms in a way, like all

sservations worth making, but constantly ignored to the

esent day—as that "beautiful words are the cause of beauti-

1 phrase" ; that "no rhythm whatsoever is banished from

1 In fact, the whole body of ancient

holia on Greek, and Commentaries

Latin, literature is singularly bare

criticism proper.

2 His Three Literary Letters have

been edited, with annotations, by

Prof. Roberts (Cambridge, 1901).

3 Extracts from Dionysius will be

found in Loci Critici.

unmetred composition"; that Plato's style combines pel-

lucid freshness with peculiar charm of archaism; that the

noblest style is that which has the greatest variety. We

owe him the actual quotation of Sappho's hymn to Aphrodite,

and of the only considerable passage we possess of Pindar's

Dithyrambic. And if we agree with him less here, we can

learn almost as much, and be almost as grateful for the

learning, from his repeated expression—in regard to Plato—

of that horror of gorgeousness in prose style which is so

characteristic of the ancients.

His successors in Greek criticism must be despatched

briefly,1 for we are here only concerned with the more im-

portant influences and supplies of matter which they could

furnish to English criticism when it started, or had furnished

to that Italian criticism which was to be so powerful on all

its modern successors.

Of these, the whole mass of the strictly "rhetorical" writers

must be briefly set aside. They had, it has been said, no small

The Rheto-

ricians. influence, by their publication at the Aldine press,

in determining the general resurrection of criticism:

but they could give little assistance in detail, and

the chief special subject to which they helped to draw atten-

tion—that of Figures—had much more bane than antidote in

it.2 Plutarch has, in his miscellaneous writings, a

Plutarch. great deal of ostensibly critical or semi-critical

matter, and has been put forward by some as a possible

author of the great little book attributed (v. inf.) to Longinus.

But, except in the way of general exhortation to the study of

literature, made even then from a wrong point of view, it is

almost impossible to discover any real critical stuff in him.

The moral prepossession dominates everywhere. It is dif-

1 They will be found fully treated

in the original History.

2 In one, half rhetorician, half

bellettrist, Philostratus (c. 200), occurs

a remarkable definition of φαντασία,

Imagination, as "fashioning what one

has not seen, supposing and conceiving

it on the analogy of the Real." There

is nothing in any other ancient—not

even in Plato, not even in Longinus—

so like the Imagination of Shakespeare

in the famous "of Imagination all

compact," and of Coleridge, v. inf.

(For Addison and his Imagination, v

inf. likewise.)

10

ENGLISH CRITICISM.

ferent with Lucian. One of the shrewdest of men, possessed

himself of an admirable gift of writing; a trained rheto-

Lucian. rician, though a deserter (not without good reason,

as things went) from Rhetoric's service; a born

miscellanist too, and a magazine-writer and reviewer a

millennium and a half before magazines and reviews

existed.—it would have been amazing if Lucian had not

touched the subject. He did: and the Vera Historia is partly

criticism of “wonder” voyages and travels; the Lexiphanes

a satire on accepted and outlandish phraseology; the “How

History should be Written” a half sober, half ironic tractate of

advice. “The Master of the Orators” and “The Twice-accused

Man” are skits on his old profession; and the very curious

little piece entitled “To one who said ‘You are the Pro-

metheus of Prose,’” a tantalising but entirely baffling dis-

cussion of the writer's own attitude in Dialogue and literature

generally. In no author is this critical attitude more omni-

present than in Lucian; and from hardly any can a reader,

whom gods have made critical himself, learn more. But as a

direct teacher of the subject he can hardly be said to exist.

The greatest of late Greek critics—a critic as great as

Aristotle, though in a slightly different kind—was the

Longinus. author of the treatise commonly called On the

Sublime,1 and long identified with Longinus, the

Minister of Zenobia. Of the doubts (sometimes too peremp-

torily turned into positive denials) of this identification, it is

not necessary to say any more here than that the evidence

for it is very weak, but that the evidence against it, of a

kind really to be called evidence, is non-existent. And the

contingent question whether the date is the first century

after Christ as some think, or that of Longinus (fl. c. 250 A.D.)

himself, is of still less importance. The book, from its

references, cannot be earlier than the period of the Roman

1 Περὶ Ὕψους. The best edition of

the Greek (with translation) is that of

Prof. Rhys Roberts, uniform with

other books recently mentioned (Cam-

bridge, 1899). There are also valuable

English versions by Mr H. R. Havell, with

an Introduction by Mr A. Lang (Lon-

don, 1890) and by Mr A. O. Prickard

(Oxford, 1906). The present writer

has selected and translated the most

important passages in Loci Critici.

Empire; how late it may be in that period is, from internal

evidence, quite uncertain. The only fact of importance for

us is that here - in Greek of a curious and rather difficult

but not barbarous type, and showing on the one hand a

knowledge of all classical Greek literature, on the other

a state of society such as only existed in the first three

centuries of the Christian era - is a critical treatise which

adopts a remarkably different standpoint from that of almost

all its predecessors, and contains some of the most admirable

critical utterances to be found in all literature.

The great and distinguishing note of Longinus is that his

main critical object is "appreciation" - the quest after the

His prin- great principle or quality of "Sublimity" and

ciples and the enjoyment of the "transport" which it causes.

message. It is on this quality that he lays his finger from

the first. It had been admitted, though by no means uni-

versally, that Art should delight, but almost always with

a caveat that it must at the same time instruct or profit.

Longinus cuts off this caveat, and insists wholly and solely

on the transport-the ecstasy-caused by great literary art.

He is not, indeed, wholly and unintelligibly "modern,"-he

would not be half so interesting or a tithe as important if

he were,-but he is surprisingly so. He still lays, and could

hardly but lay, if he was (as the historical Longinus

certainly was) a rhetorical teacher, stress-too much stress-

on the "Figures," not only as useful tickets of nomenclature,

but as positive self-existing agents in the production of

Sublimity. He still has the excessive terror of gorgeous

style-of language poetically figurative in the other sense, and

the like. And, most noteworthy of all, though his usual

judgments are startlingly like our own, he is uncompromis-

ingly "ancient" in his dislike to the "Romantic" elements-the

adventures, the marvels, and so forth-of the Odyssey. Hence

he is no portent or sport, dissociated from his time and kind

by irreconcilable differences. He is simply one who has "gone

up higher,"-has transcended (like his own Sublime) the lower

rules, and roamed beyond the narrow inductions of his pre-

decessors; who has, above all, discovered that it is only the

12

ENGLISH CRITICISM.

intermediate business, if even that, of the critic to frame

rules and kinds for the production of great literature,—that

it is his highest and main business to enjoy and examine

the great literature that has been produced, and so to aid the

enjoyment of it by others.

Of this exaltation of view-point and alteration of attitude

The gospel

of Trans-

port and the

rejection of

Faultless-

ness.

his little book — it is, unfortunately, not only truncated at

the end, but presents numerous large and lament-

able gaps in its actual continuity — provides con-

stant examples. The substitution of “transport” for

the old rhetorical shibboleth of “persuasion” comes

at the very beginning1, and would almost suffice of

itself. The decreased insistence on mere story or subject—

he does, of course, admit and insist that great thoughts will

make for great expression, but does not take it as matter of

course that they will effect it—is another. His heightening

of the expressions of Dionysius1 into the final doctrines that

“beautiful words are the very light of thought,” and that

critical judgment is “the last acquired fruit of long en-

deavour,” put, finally, important and, up to his time (whatever

it was), mostly neglected truths. Although all the best

critics had laid some proper stress on rhythmical harmony

in prose as well as verse, no one had been quite so emphatic

on the subject as he is. But the most important thing,

perhaps, to be noticed in his treatise, from the point of view

of critical progress, is its rejection—its positive treading

under foot — of “faultlessness” as a criterion of perfection.

For though it is not to be supposed for a moment that the

greater ancient critics—that such a man as Aristotle, for

instance—would have definitely inculcated mere faultlessness

as constituting perfection, yet it cannot be denied that the

whole tendency of classical criticism—including, perhaps, some

of Longinus's own in the instance noted above—is in this

direction. The provision of large numbers of positive rules

inevitably suggests—to the feebler minds, at any rate—that if

1

One of the conjectural attributions

though probably intended. But it is

in the MSS. is to “Dionysius” the

Halicarnassian being not so named,

“Anon.” for suggested alternatives.

“Longinus” or

a mere guess, with

you do not break these rules it will be all right with you.

The nervons terror of excess has an even stronger influence

in the same direction.

But Longinus, though he may have shared this last to

some extent, did not allow himself to be influenced by

it here; and more or less elaborately prefers the “faulty”

Homer, Sophocles, Demosthenes, Plato, to the “faultless”

Apollonius, Ion, Hypereides, Lysias. Now, as the reader

will see at once, this of itself involves judging of the

books in themselves and by the effect they produce, not

by reference to previously constructed rules of fault and

beauty.

Of later Greek criticism little need be said. The late

rhetoricians—Libanius, Themistius, Julian the Apostate, and

others—give not much in amount and still less in positive

value; and from Byzantine times the really re-

Photius. markable Bibliotheca of the Patriarch Photius (late

ninth century) is almost the only book that need be men-

tioned. From the special point of view of influence, indeed,

these writers hardly require notice here.1 Even Longinus,

though published in mid-sixteenth century, did not exercise

much till late in the seventeenth, when, by one of the oddest

coups of Fortune, he was taken up, translated, and treated

as an authority by the critic of the world (among persons not

dunces), who was probably most alien from him in spirit,

purpose, and creed—by Boileau.

The intrinsic importance of the Latin criticism which the

men of the English Renaissance had, or might have had, before

them is very much smaller than that of the Greek;

Latin and what it has is, as in other cases, almost wholly,

Criticism. and not always intelligently, borrowed from Greek

itself. But it was handier of application, and so it happened

that, while Quintilian and Seneca and others almost dominated

the stubborn intelligence of Ben Jonson, Horace’s medley of

secondhand and arbitrary dogma in the Epistle to the Pisos took

1 The reason why Photius appears is teresting estimate of books—especially

that he gives us a large amount of in- valuable considering his date.

14

ENGLISH CRITICISM.

early effect, and became pure gospel to the late seventeenth

and most of the eighteenth century.

Latin criticism itself began as late as might be expected,

and even later. There seems to have been hardly anything

deserving the name before Varro, of whose work

Cicero. in the kind we have practically nothing left, and

Cicero, from whom we have a great deal, naturally enough

devoted mainly to his own division of oratory, but amounting

to very little in substance. Most of it is—again naturally

enough—concerned with actual technical rhetoric, and we have

seen that while this might promise something, it performed

very little for real literary criticism. Of his most famous and

interesting critical dictum of the proper kind, in reference to

his own contemporary, Lucretius, the text is uncertain and

the interpretations of that text hopelessly contradictory.1 And

the most interesting thing that can be extracted from him is

a list (which has been actually drawn up) of Latin technical

critical terms corresponding to those which had been previ-

ously evolved into something like a regular critical vocabulary

by the Greeks.

When, however, we pass from Cicero to Horace, the case is

not a little altered. There are numerous passages of criticism

Horace— in the Satires and Epistles, but they all yield in

The Epistle interest, and may even be said to be subsumed in

to the Pisos substance, when we turn from them to the above-

—its con- mentioned Epistle to the Pisos,2 commonly, unjusti-

summate ex- fiably, and in almost every sense unfortunately

pression. termed the Ars Poetica. Unjustifiably, for there is no evidence

that Horace ever called it so, and very little likelihood that so

shrewd a person, so well versed in the ways of the world,

1 Ep. ad Quintum, ii. 11 (or 9): Lucretii poemata, ut scribis, ita sunt :

multis luminibus ingenii multce tamen artis. This is said to be the MS.

reading, and but for the stumbling-

block of tamen would be wholly laud-

atory. But in that case tamen is

almost impossible to admit with its

usual meaning of “adversative quali-

fication”: and most editors, till re-

cently, have supposed that a non must

have slipped out either before multis

or before multce.

2 The present writer has inserted a

translated cento of this in Loci Critici.

The verse translations of Jonson and

of Lord Roscommon are in a manner

classics, and prose ones abound.

would have attached such an ampulla of a title to a slight

tissue of hints on Dramatic Composition, thrown together in

what his own adorers in the eighteenth century might have

called an elegant dishabille, as by a gentleman of parts and

spirit speaking to gentlemen of the like. But its singular

clarity and felicity of expression—the very triumph, on the

less poetical side, of its author's gifts in that way.—and the

manner in which it puts, with that confident and unhesitating

though urbane dogmatism which has such an effect on the

common run of readers, the opinions on the subject, and the

typical method of arriving at those opinions, common during

the whole classical period—these things naturally made it all-

powerful with the neo-classics. You wanted “rules,” and you

had them here, in a form giving no trouble to the memory and

attractive to the taste, put forth, not by a mere “preceptist”

but by a craftsman of unsurpassed competence in more than

one branch of poetry itself, with no insolent dictation or irri-

tating pedantry, but in an easy take-for-granted manner, which

it might seem at once insolent and pedantic to resist.

The little piece is, indeed, full of plausible generalities, put

(as must again be noted) with the most unsurpassable and

hardly imitable literary neatness. Who can deny

Its plausi-

bility.

that “inconsistent things must not be joined”; that

excess of any quality is dangerous, and attempts at

constant variation teasing; that you should choose subjects

suitable to your strength; not endeavour to say everything you

can think of; stick (not without a little gentle attempt at

originality) to accepted diction and metre; abstain from dis-

gusting subjects; try to instruct or delight, or both? It is

true that all this is exceedingly obvious,—obvious (sometimes,

at any rate) not with the true and great obviousness noticed

above, but with a kind of superficiality which, when stripped of

Horace’s exquisite expression, looks half puerile and half anile.

But, with that expression especially, it sounds exactly fitted to

provoke the sentiment which Tennyson has so excellently

formulated—

“I thowt a said whot a owt to ‘a said,”

and to encourage a mild intellectual satisfaction.

16

ENGLISH CRITICISM.

Yet when other passages—or even some of these same passages with context and second consideration — are studied,

Its super- perhaps the effect is not quite so satisfactory. In

ficial, desul- the first place, the whole is seen to be extremely

tory, desultory. There is not, as in Aristotle, any theory

of drama presented; and though there is, as in Aristotle and

on larger basis, a sort of induction from existing dramas as to

what will and will not “do,” it is in the highest degree frag-

mentary and casual. But the greatest and most pervading

drawback is the extraordinary arbitrariness of many, indeed of

most, of the special precepts.

For instance, why lay down (without reason given except

as to usage) that certain metres have been irrevocably and

and ar- finally assigned to certain kinds of poetry? Why

bitrary declare that the personages of mythology—Achilles,

character. Medea, &c.—are always to be presented in the same

way? Still worse (for some fight might be made, in the cases

just mentioned, for preserving types already famous in art),

why assign a slavish uniformity to ages, classes, &c., and in-

sist that boys shall always be boys, old men always testy and

avaricious, &c. For it is this which leads directly to such

ineffable absurdities as Rymer's contention that Iago ought not

to have been represented as a crafty traitor, because he is a

soldier, and soldiers are always frank and open.

And the habit hardens on him. Why must plays always

have five acts, no more and no less? Why may there not be

a “tetragonist”? The experience of ages has shown that,

though it must be carefully managed, a murder on the stage

need not excite disgust; and that so far from “keeping out of

sight what can be presently narrated,” you will be much better

advised in keeping in sight whatever you can, and curtailing

mere narration as much as possible.

In short, Horace shows, with every possible advantage of

form but to considerable disadvantage of substance when care-

fully studied, the strictest classic, nay, neo-classic, creed of

order, restraint, positive rule.

There is, in proportion, far more critical matter, both of an

indirect and a direct purtenance, in post-Augustan than in

earlier Latin ; and the satiric poets—Juvenal to some extent,

Persius and Martial still more—are full of it. There is also a

good deal in the elder Seneca, some in Pliny, and

Others—

Petronius.

at least two passages in the Satyricon of Petronius

which attracted attention from the critics of the

seventeenth century. But most of the references which would

bear out this statement are so fragmentary, scattered, and in

their individual value minute, that it would be impossible to

give them in detail, and rather useless to summarise them here.

1

It may, however, be said generally that while they indicate the

general tone of tendency mentioned above, they give us evidence

of a strong bent in the Roman taste, when it took to literature

at all, towards a semi-barbatic gorgeousness which was the

reverse of Attic.

But the most important Latin document of this period—the

most important document, indeed, of the whole of Latin

criticism—is furnished by the Oratorical Institutions

Quintilian.

or Institutes of Oratory of Quintilian. It may in-

deed be said that a man's competence in criticism itself may

almost be measured by the estimate he holds of this remark-

able book. It is not precisely a work of genius : its intentions

were too strictly practical for that. But it is the work of a

master in his own craft, who to professional knowledge and

practical experience added unusual common-sense, a sufficient

dose of originality, a saving sense of humour, acuteness, freedom

from any blinding or paralysing partiality, with at the same

time a sensible though not extravagant patriotism in regard to

the literature of his own country.

To those who have not read the book the oratorical pre-

Great merits

occupation may seem likely to do harm,—indeed,

of his work

it has been said already more than once that

generally.

Oratory and Rhetoric, while encouraging the exist-

ence, did somewhat damage the quality and range, of ancient

1 They will be found cited and dis-

cussed in the larger History. The

passages from the Satyricon are trans-

lated in full in Loci Critici. These

latter condemn the practice of declama-

tions on imaginary subjects (a very

favourite one at Rome), but inculcate

the doctrine of furor poeticus, which

was much taken up by the earlier neo-

classics to give licence to the restriction

of their “rules,” but discountenanced

by the later.

B

criticism. But Rhetorice had long acquired the nearly complete

sense of "literary education," and Quintilian's identification of

good writing and good speaking, though it may or may not be

excessive from the oratorical side, is wholly advantageous from

the literary. His description of a good Professor of Oratory is

applicable, with hardly a word changed, to a good reviewer or

critic; his judgments of Greek or Latin writers, whether

original or not, whether wholly sound or not, are almost

purely literary; his remarks on the linguistic peculiarities of

Greek and Latin, as contrasted with each other, are wholly

connected with literary effect; and while, of course, portions

(and large portions) of his work are of professional and technical

bearing only, almost the whole of the last five books might be

separated and (with nothing but verbal changes) made into a

Treatise of Criticism. On Figures Quintilian, though he may

pay disproportionate attention to them, still is perfectly aware

of the danger of the actually and constantly committed fault of

separating off some quite ordinary fashion of speech, ticketing

it with a long Greek name, and thenceforward regarding the

ticket as something real, the attaching of which to similar

phrases is an illuminative and profitable exercise of the critical

faculty.1 His remarks on the old divisions of style are sensible;

his criticism of Seneca the Younger—who represented the very

opposite school of writing to his own—is one of the fairest of

such things that we have from any ancient; and, in fact, his

whole voluminous work is full of enlightenment, judgment,

and intellectual instruction generally.

The chief point in which Quintilian comes short is the point

in which nearly all ancient critics except Longinus do come

short, the "judging of authors," especially poets,

Interesting some extent subordinates his criticism to the

shortcomings from the appreciative point of view. That he to

in his judg- rhetorical value of the author concerned is no

ment of great matter. It was natural, it was constantly

authors. done; and, odd as it seems to us, it was pushed to the most

extravagant extent by both Greeks (especially with regard to

1 His earlier observation that "it from Figures of Speech," is also a far-

is often difficult to distinguish Faults reaching one, and worth meditating.

Homer) and Latins (especially by Macrobius in regard to

Virgil). But we are somewhat disappointed, though not exactly

surprised, especially if we remember Longinus's selection of

this poet as a “faultless” foil to Homer, when we find that

Apollonius Rhodius has only “an evenly sustained mediocrity.”

For the charm of the Rhodian is a distinctly Romantic charm,

and to this (since even Longinus could be insensible to it in the

greater instance of the Odyssey) we could not expect Quintilian

to be open. The point of view is again obvious, again dis-

appointing, when we find Theocritus allowed

to be admirable as far as he goes, but patronisingly dismissed

as “rustic and pastoral.” Alcæus “descends to amorous

subjects,” Æschylus is bombastic and extravagant.

But the Greek judgments may be—to some extent they

certainly are—traditional: the Latin must be awaited with

more interest, as likely to be more at first hand. Disappoint-

ment, it is to be feared, will come here too. Virgil is not over-

praised—in fact, not merely the Virgiliomaniacs of the Renais-

sance, but some more modern adorers of the Mantuan, might

think Quintilian half-hearted. If he is, as some might expect,

nearer to Renaissance monomania on the prose side in his

Ciceronianism, it is very pardonable. He is far from being as

enthusiastic as he might be about Ovid on the one hand, or

about Plautus on the other. But the sharpest, though very

far indeed from the most unexpected, contrast with modern

ideas is to be found in reference to Catullus and to Lucretius.

That Horace should be praised, and praised highly, is inevit-

able and well deserved; but when we find that he is almost

the only Roman lyric poet worth reading, and that Catullus is

only mentioned for his “bitter iambics”—i.e., satires—then the

difference of the point of view does come before us unmis-

takably. And, on the other hand, that Lucretius—that the

furor arduus Lucreti which Statius, a contemporary of Quin-

tilian's and a poet, had covered himself with glory and almost

deserved his Middle-Age popularity by defending—should be

dismissed with the mere ticket “difficult” pinned to him,—this

is the most eloquent item in the whole catalogue of judgments.

It is pretty certain that Quintilian disapproved of the poet's

20

ENGLISH CRITICISM.

philosophical and religious ideas ; it is pretty certain also, from

his remarks about Ennius and Plautus himself, that he did not

like his archaisms of language. The matter of even the De

Rerum Natura, putting these things aside, is certainly not

always "easy." And the poetry, as poetry, does not strike

Quintilian at all.

After Quintilian, the importance and interest of Latin

critical writing diminishes, if it does not actually come to

an end. Aulus Gellius and Macrobius provide

Later Latin us with a good deal of critical matter, not of

Empire and much value; and we continue to get indirect sup-

the "Dark" plies from the poets, such as Ausonius. Moreover,

Ages. there is a certain bulk, but not nearly so large

as that in Greek, of directly rhetorical writing, including a

treatise (pretty certainly spurious) assigned to St Augustine,

who was actually a teacher of the subject. On the verge

of the so-called "Dark" Ages, or over it, we have documents

of a certain attraction, because they show us the way in

which literary appreciation died off into the almost

absolute trance which we find in the "Middle" Ages. Such

are the numerous critical observations of the poet-bishop,

Sidonius Apollinaris, and the allegorical treatise on the Seven

Liberal Arts (among them very particularly Rhetoric) of

Martianus Capella, which retained a certain vogue for a

good thousand years. Both are of the fifth century. Later

still (sixth century), we find curious but substantially value-

less examples of indulgence in criticism based upon false

etymology, and mythology hopelessly muddled, from a group

of writers bearing, with various additions, the name of

"Fulgentius"; and a little from the theologian-encyclopædist

Isidore of Seville and the poet Venantius Fortunatus, both

of whom lived into the seventh century; while there is some-

thing of the sort in the "Venerable" Bede, who did not die

till the eighth had seen its first generation. We find, as the

various barbarian or at least provincial elements begin to

leaven the lump of the decaying Roman Empire, an increasing

taste for not very well chosen gorgeousness of language, an

increasing attention to the mere technical details of Rhetoric,

and an increasing fancey for chasing the will-o'-the-wisps of

ethical - allegorical interpretation; but at the same time an

ever - decreasing grasp of anything that can be called real

criticism.1

In the Middle Ages proper this grasp has relaxed itself

to such an extent that for the most part it hardly even

Barren-

ness of the

attempts to touch its object. A few technical

Middle

Ages.

treatises exist, and we meet, now and then, a

more or less banal expression of approval of a

writer. Even the earliest dawn of the Renaissance

in Italy and the renewed study (from at any rate textual

and subject points of view) of the classical authors, give us

little, if anything, of the kind; and from the year 1000 A.D.

—the rather imaginary line between “Dark” and “Middle”—

to the beginning of the sixteenth century, we meet practically

nothing2 that can be called a critical treatise of substantive

importance, except the solitary and in some respects rather

puzzling, but extraordinarily valuable, document of the De

Vulgari Eloquio by Dante.3

The puzzles of this—or most of them—do not concern us.

The document itself does. In it we have—beyond all reason-

able doubt, from the pen of the greatest man of

Except

Dante.

letters between Homer and Shakespeare—a treatise

of astonishing precision on the nature and con-

ditions of a standard literary language; and on the formal

(and something more than the formal) characteristics of Italian

poetry, extending incidentally to poetry at large. Dante

knows, with sufficient and almost scientific exactness, the actual

distribution of European speech. He recognises and deplores

the excessively dialectic character of Italian, and recommends—

1 Those who are curious about these

matters will find them fully treated in

vol. i., bk. ii., chap. iv., and bk. iii.,

chap. i., of the larger History.

2 For what there is see Hist. Crit.,

the rest of the chapter just cited, and

chap. iii. of the same bk. and vol.

3 The original Latin can best be

read in Dr Moore's Opere di Dante

(Oxford, 1897); but there is a good

annotated English translation by Mr

Ferrers - Howell (London, 1890). A

catena of the most striking passages

is in Loci Critici. An interesting

article on Dante's critical attitude,

from a point of view different from

that taken here, appeared in the

Quarterly Review for October 1910,

by Professor Herford.

12

ENGLISH CRITICISM.

vhat he was, in fact, himself to accomplish — the selection

nd construction, out of these dialects, of a standard form. And

hen he goes on to the consideration of the special require-

ments and characteristics of poetry itself.

The critical interests of Dante's work are numerous, and

leserve thorough examination. In fact, every one who attacks

The De this subject seriously should read, in original or

Vulgari translation, the tractate, which is very short, as

Eloquio. a companion to Aristotle's two books, the Epistle

o the Pisos, Longinus, and some at least of Quintilian. As

a whole, its importance lies in the way in which this almost

greatest of poets—a poet of intense quality as regards choice

of subject as well as religious and philosophical attitude,—a

poet as different as even fancy can conceive from a mere

'idle singer of an empty day" or a mere versifier —insists

upon form, upon language. It is impossible to lay more stress

han Dante does on the necessity of specially selected and

'sifted" poetic diction, in which the finest words only shall

se permitted,—no childish talk or rustic phrase, no weak or

rivial term. It is impossible, again, to insist more peremp-

torily and perseveringly than he does on the importance of

he mere "numbers"—on the fact that the poet must not

expect harmony of versification to come to him of its own

accord, and as a sort of necessary accident inseparable from

his other gifts, but must choose the best example and follow

he best modes in order to attain it. It is not easy to think

of a greater contrast to the usual attitude of the ancients or

to that of some of the moderns, as in the cases especially of

Wordsworth and Mr Matthew Arnold.1 Attempts have in-

leed been made to disprove this opposition, and the student

hould form his own opinion after consulting them; but if

he comparison be made without preliminary prejudice, there

s no doubt in the mind of the present writer what the

esult will be.

The book, though there are early references to its existence,

seems to have remained long unknown as an actual composi-

ion; and it was only when Italian was beginning to devote

1 See the sections on them post.

itself largely to criticism that it at last (1529) appeared trans-

lated into the vernacular, and issued with rather ambiguous

attribution by the poet Trissino. But it was pub-

Criticism revived in lished in the original form fifty years later (1577),

Italy at the and between the two dates a great critical efflor-

Neo-Class- escence had taken place. Still in Latin, but in verse,

ics: Vida. was written the remarkable treatise of Girolamo

Vida (1527). In this the neo-classic system—of

not merely worshipping and imitating the ancients, but of

actually "stealing"1 from them to the utmost possible extent,

of adoration of Virgil, of dislike of conceit and of Romance—

is formulated in a fashion which extracted from Pope,2 as a

sympathiser, two centuries later, the epithet "Immortal," and

which now remains the ne plus ultra of purely arbitrary

criticism. But the vernacular soon asserted its rights; and

from Daniello (1536) onwards a great herd of dissertators and

commentators3 devoted themselves for more than two full

generations to the subject. Most of these took a more or less

classical line, and to one of the two greatest of them (which

actually deserves the doubtful honour is uncertain), Castelvetro

(1570) and Scaliger (1561), is assigned the establishment of

those three Unities — Action, Time, and Place — of which

Aristotle had not so much as mentioned the third, and had

passed the second over as lightly as possible. Yet another,

Minturno (1559), spent great labour and considerable ability

on the subject, and has been supposed by some to have exercised

special influence on Sir Philip Sidney.

Some, however, of these critics, observing the difficulty of

accommodating Aristotle's rules—especially as tightened and

The extended by his new interpreters—to the recent work

innovators: especially in Romance, of which Italy was justly

Patrizzi. proud, began to hint, or even boldly to assert,

doctrines or positions which, though they hardly made many

disciples at the moment, were destined to inspire the great

1 Vida's own word.

2 In the Essay on Criticism. Vida's

Poetics were actually translated by

Pitt, one of the Pope school, and

figure in Chalmers's and other collec-

tions of "British Poets."

3 The names of nearly all of them

will be found, and the work of nearly

all of any importance is analysed, in

the larger History.

24

ENGLISH CRITICISM.

Romantic revolt of the latest eighteenth century. They 1 asked why times in which manners, morals, religion were so totally different, should prescribe to comedy its lines and scenes and atmosphere. They 2 pointed out that while classical Epic might be a fine and legitimate kind, that supplied no reason why modern Romance, with its different plan, should not be equally fine and equally legitimate. They began, almost or quite for the first time, to take a directly historical view of literature,—a view which almost inevitably suggests to those who take it that one part of the history cannot lay down the law to another. And one of the most remarkable of them, the Platonist philosopher Patrizi (perhaps not in full consciousness of the meaning of his words, but practically), anticipated 3 the whole modern Romantic doctrine on the matter by declaring that “any subject that can be poetically treated is a fit subject for poetry,” thereby at once transferring the criterion and constructive essence of poetry from the subject to the treatment. But these innovators, who were followed up remarkably in Spain on the special subject of the Drama, were on the whole in a minority, and the general bent of Italian criticism was towards the classical side, or rather the neo-classic—that is to say, the strengthening and hardening of “classical” rules.4

Considering the relations of France and Italy at the time, it was inevitable that this Italian criticism should affect the French critic- “Middle Kingdom” of the West before it came to ism: The us; and it did, but not to so great an extent as might ‘Pléiade.’ perhaps have been thought. The great Pléiade school was indeed critical or nothing, and its two chief poets each produced critical treatises 5 of note, the latter of which undoubtedly had something to do with early prosodic criticism, both in Southern and Northern English. But the effect was not very strong or lasting, and it never amounted to anything like that produced later, when Malherbe and Boileau had sup-

1 For instance, the comic writer and tale-teller, Grazzini (“Il Lasca”).

2 Especially the famous novel-writer Ginthio and his pupil Pigna.

3 In his Della Poetica (1586).

4 V. inf., Interchapter I.

5 The Défense et Illustration de la Langue Française of Du Bellay (1549), and the Abrégé de l’Art Poétique of Ronsard (1565).

planted Ronsard and Du Bellay, with infinite loss to poetry

and not much gain to criticism.

From our own older writers the Elizabethans, when at last

they took to criticism, had very little to borrow or to criticise.1

Earliest There never was a poet with much more of the

glimmerings critical spirit in him than Chaucer; and he shows

it not merely in Sir Thopas, which is mainly a

parody-criticism of the sillier forms of Romance, but in a

hundred remarks, serious and comic, scattered about his work.

Yet he never dreamt of providing any regular critical work,

though a parallel to Dante’s De Vulgari Eloquio from him is

not actually unthinkable, and would have been priceless.

More immediately before the Elizabethans themselves, Wyatt

and Surrey had gone about the work of Ronsard and Du Bellay,

but without manifesto or dogmatic utterance. It was all to

come: and at last it came.

1 The chief exceptions are some to some of his translations and

interesting but very novice-like observations of Caxton’s, in the Prefaces

editions.

26

CHAPTER II

ELIZABETHAN CRITICISM.

BACKWARDNESS OF ENGLISH CRITICISM NOT IMPLYING INFERIORITY—ITS CAUSE—THE INFLUENCE OF RHETORIC AND OTHER MATTERS—HAWES—

THE FIRST TUDOR CRITICS—WILSON : HIS ‘ART OF RHETORIC’; HIS AT-

TACK ON “INKHORN TERMS”—HIS DEALING WITH FIGURES—CHEKE : HIS RESOLUTE ANGLICISM AND ANTI-PRECISOSITY—HIS CRITICISM OF SALLUST

—ASCHAM—HIS PATRIOTISM—HIS HORROR OF ROMANCE, AND OF THE ‘MORTE D’ARTHUR’—HIS GENERAL CRITICAL ATTITUDE TO PROSE,

AND TO POETRY—THE CRAZE FOR CLASSICAL METRES—SPECIAL WANTS OF ENGLISH PROSODY—ITS KINDS : (1) CHAUCERIAN—(2) ALLITERATIVE

—(3) ITALIANATED—DEFICIENCIES OF ALL THREE—THE TEMPTATIONS OF CRITICISM IN THIS RESPECT—ITS ADVENTURERS : ASCHAM HIMSELF

—WATSON AND DRANT—GASCOIGNE—HIS ‘NOTES OF INSTRUCTION’— THEIR CAPITAL VALUE—SPENSER AND HARVEY—THE PURITAN ATTACK

ON POETRY—GOSSON—‘THE SCHOOL OF ABUSE’—LODGE’S ‘REPLY’— SIDNEY’S ‘APOLOGY FOR POETRY’—ABSTRACT OF IT—ITS MINOR SHORT-

COMINGS AND MAJOR HERESIES—THE EXCUSES OF BOTH, AND THEIR AMPLE COMPENSATION—KING JAMES’S ‘REULIS AND CAUTELIS’—

WEBBE’S ‘DISCOURSE’—SLIGHT IN KNOWLEDGE, BUT ENTHUSIASTIC, IF UNCRITICAL, IN APPRECIATION—PUTTENHAM’S (?) ‘ART OF ENGLISH

POESIE’—ITS ERUDITION—SYSTEMATIC ARRANGEMENT AND EXUBERANT INDULGENCE IN FIGURES—MINORS : HARINGTON, MERES, WEBSTER,

BOLTON, ETC.—CAMPION AND HIS ‘OBSERVATIONS’—DANIEL AND HIS ‘DEFENCE OF RHYME’—BACON—THE ‘ESSAYS’—THE ‘ADVANCEMENT

OF LEARNING’—ITS DENUNCIATION OF MERE WORD-STUDY—ITS VIEW OF POETRY—SOME “OBITER DICTA”—THE WHOLE OF VERY SLIGHT

IMPORTANCE—STIRLING’S “ANACRISIS”—BEN JONSON : HIS EQUIPMENT —HIS ‘PREFACES,’ ETC.—THE DRUMMOND CONVERSATIONS—THE ‘DIS-

COVERIES’—FORM OF THE BOOK—ITS DATE—MOSAIC OF OLD AND NEW —THE FLING AT MONTAIGNE—AT ‘TAMERLANE’—THE SHAKESPEARE

PASSAGE—AND THAT ON BACON—GENERAL CHARACTER OF THE BOOK.

THE fortune of England in matters political has often been noticed; and it has at least deserved to be noticed, hardly less

BACKWARDNESS OF ENGLISH.

often, in matters literary. One of the luckiest of these chances came at the time of the Renaissance; when the necessary

changes were effected with the minimum of direct foreign influence, and so slowly that the natural force of the nation

and the language was able completely, or almost completely, to assimilate the influences, both foreign and classical, that

rained upon it.

Nor was this least the case in respect of criticism.1 The history of this part of English literary evolution has been,

Backward-

until recently, much neglected; and it can hardly

ness of

be said even yet to have received comprehensive

English

attention. It is all the more necessary to bestow

Criticism

not implying some time and pains on it here, with at least some

inferiority.

fair hope of correcting an unfair depreciation. The

Baron of Bradwardine (displaying that shrewd appreciation of contrast between English and Scottish characteristics which

belonged, if not to himself, to his creator) remarked to Colonel Talbot that it was the Colonel's "humour, as he [the Baron] had

seen in other gentlemen of birth and honour" in the Colonel's country, "to derogate from the honour of his burgonet." Gentle-

men of the most undoubted birth and honour (as such things go in literature), from Dryden to Matthew Arnold, have displayed

this humour in regard to English criticism. But there has been something too much of it; and it has been taken far too

literally by the ignorant. M. Brunetière has expressed his opinion that Frenchmen would make un véritable marché de

dupe if they exchanged Boileau, Marmontel, La Harpe, and Co. for Lessing and some others. I shall not in this place express

any opinion on that question directly. But, if this book does what I shall endeavour to make it do, it will at least show

that to exchange, for any foreign company, our own critics, from Sidney and Ben Jonson, through Dryden and Addison,

1 The two chief monographs on this are J. E. Spingarn, Literary Criticism in the Renaissance, New York, 1899

(pp. 253-310), and Professor F. E. Schelling, Poetic and Verse Criticism of the Reign of Elizabeth, Philadelphia,

1891. Haslewood reprinted most of the texts in Ancient Critical Essays, 2 vols., London, 1811-15, and Mr Arber

the most important in his English Reprints. Professor Gregory Smith has more lately edited the fullest

collection yet issued (2 vols., Oxford, 1904).

28

ELIZABETHAN CRITICISM.

Samuel Johnson and Coleridge, Lamb and Hazlitt, to Mr Arnold himself, would be “un véritable marché de ”—Moses Primrose.

It will have been sufficiently seen in the last chapter that the backwardness of English—a backwardness long exaggerated, but to some extent real, and to no small extent healthy—was nowhere exhibited more distinctly than in the department which supplies the materials of this history. Until the close of the fifteenth century, and for some decades afterwards, not a single critical treatise on English existed in the English language, or even in Latin; the nearest approach, even in fragment, to any utterance of the kind being the naif and interesting, but only infantinely critical, remarks of Caxton in his prefaces.1

The fact is that, not only until a nation is in command of a single form of “curial” speech for literary purposes, but Its cause. until sufficient experiments have been made in at least a majority of the branches of literature, criticism is impossible, and would, if possible, be rather mischievous than beneficial. Now England, though it possessed at least one very great author, and more than a fair number of respectable seconds to him, was, up to 1500 at least, in neither case. Till the end of the fourteenth century it had been practically trilingual; it was bilingual till past the end of the fifteenth, if not till far into the seventeenth, so far as literature was concerned. Nor, till the towering eminence of Chaucer had helped to bring the vernacular into prominence, was there any one settled dialect of primacy in the vernacular itself. Further, the fourteenth century was nearly at its end before any bulk of prose, save on religious subjects, was written; and for another century the proportion of translation over original work in prose was very large indeed.

At the same time the scholastic Rhetoric—which had always played to criticism the part of a half-faithless guardian, who keeps his pupil out of the full enjoyment of his property,

1 Such as those on the “fair language of France,” and the strictures passed by Margaret of England and Burgundy on the “default in mine English ” (His-

tory of Troy); on the “right good and fair English” of Lord Rivers (Dicts and Sayings of the Philosophers), and the prefatory observations on Chaucer.

yet preserves that property in good condition to hand over

The influ-

to him perforce at some future time — was still

ence of

faithfully taught.1 The enlarged and more accurate

Rhetoric

study of the classics at the Revival of Learning

and other

the originals; the eager study of those originals by Continental

matters.

scholars was sure to reflect itself upon England; and, lastly,

set classical criticism once more before students in

religious zeal and other motives combined, here as elsewhere,

to make men determined to get the vernacular into as complete

and useful a condition as possible. Nowhere does the intense

national spirit, which is the glory of the Tudor period, appear

more strongly than in this our scholastic and “umbratile”

division of the national life.

Long, indeed, before this scholastic and regular criticism made

its appearance, and during the whole course of the fifteenth

Hawes.

century, critical appreciation, stereotyped and un-

Hawes.

methodised it may be, but genuine for all that, and

stimulating, had made its appearance. The extraordinary

quality of Chaucer, the amiable pastime-making of Gower,

and, a little later, the busy polygraphy and painful rhetoric

of Lydgate, had, almost from the moment of Chaucer’s death,

attracted and inspired students. The pretty phrase about

Chaucer’s “gold dew-drops of speech,” which justly drew the

approval of a critic so often unjustly severe on ante-Renais-

sance work as Mr Arnold, was, as is known even by tyros in

the study of English literature, repeated, expanded, varied by

almost every prominent writer for a century and a quarter at

least, till it reached, not exactly final, but most definite and

noteworthy, expression in the work of Stephen Hawes, that

curious swan-singer of English mediæval poetry. In the to us

eccentric, if not positively absurd, exposition of the Trivium

and Quadrivium which diversifies the account of the courtship

1 There has been some disposition

long and curious passage of Hawes,

to deny this, and to argue that de-

to be presently discussed, is strong

spite the constant use of the word

evidence against it. Rhetoric has no

Rhetoric in the fifteenth century,

less than eight chapters of the Pastime

the teaching of the thing had declined.

of Pleasure, as against one apiece for

I do not think there is much evidence

Grammar and Logic.

of this as regards England; and the

30

ELIZABETHAN CRITICISM.

of Grandamour and La Bell Pucell,1 the praise of the Three is led up to by a discussion of Rhetoric and Poetics so elaborate and minute that it occupies more space than is given to all the other Arts together, and nearly double that which is given to all the rest, except a largely extended Astronomy. Rhetoric herself, after being greeted by and greeting her pupil in the most "aureate" style, divides herself into five parts, each of which has its chapter, with a "Replication against ignorant Persons" intervening, and many curious digressions, such as the descrip-tion of a sort of Earthly Paradise of Literature with four rivers, "Understanding," "Closely-Concluding," "Novelty," and "Car-buncles,"2 and a "Tower of Virgil" in their midst. Lydgate has been already praised for "versifying the depured3 rhetoric in English language," but he comes up once more for eulogy as "my master" in the peroration, and has in fact considerably more space than either Gower or Chaucer. Nor, confused and out of focus as such things must necessarily appear to us, should we forget that Hawes and his generation were not altogether uncritically endeavouring at what was "important to them"—the strengthening and enriching, namely, of English vocabulary, the extension of English literary practice and stock.

Yet their criticism could but be uncritical: and the luck above referred to appears first in the peculiar scholastic char-The first acter of the criticism of the first English school of Tudor critics. was exactly a man of genius, and this was perhaps lucky; for men of genius have rarely been observed to make the best schoolmasters. All were fully penetrated with the Renaissance adoration of the classics; and this was lucky again, because the classics alone could supply the training and the models just then required by English prose, and even to some extent by English poetry. All were very definitely set against Gallicising and Italianising; and yet again this was lucky, because England had been overdosed with French influence

1 The Pastime of Pleasure, ed. Wright (Percy Society, London, 1845), pp. 27-56.

2 This Fourth River will appear a less startling "novelty" when the illuminating power attributed to the stone is remembered.

3 = "purified."

for centuries, while their opposition to Italian did perhaps some good, and certainly little harm. But all were thoroughly

possessed by the idea that English, adjusted to classical models as far as possible, but not denationalised or denaturalised,

ought to be raised into a sufficient medium of literary, as of familiar, communication for Englishmen. And—with that

intense Renaissance belief in education, and a high and noble kind of education too, which puts to shame the chattering

and pottering of certain later periods on this unlucky subject —all were determined, as far as in them lay, to bring English

up to this point. The tendency was spread over a great number of persons, and a considerable period of time. Its

representatives ranged from healthy and large-souled, if not quite heroic or inspired, scholars like Ascham to “acrid-

quack” pedants like Gabriel Harvey. But the chief of these representatives were the well-known trio, of whom one has

just been mentioned—Sir1 Thomas Wilson, Sir John Cheke, and Roger Ascham. They were all friends, they were all con-

temporary members (to her glory be it ungrudgingly said) of one University, the University of Cambridge, and though the

moral character of all, and especially of the first two, had something of the taints of self-seeking and of sycophancy,

which were the blemishes of the Tudor type of writers, all had the merits of that type as exhibited in the man of the

study rather than of the field—intense curiosity and industry, a real patriotism, a half-instinctive eagerness to action, a con-

sciousness how best to adorn the Sparta that had fallen to their lot, and a business-like faculty of carrying their concep-

tions out. From various indications, positive and indirect, it would seem that Cheke, who was the eldest, was also the most

“magnetic,” the most Socratically suggestive and germinal of the three: but his actual literary work is of much inferior

importance to that of Ascham and Wilson.

Wilson’s Art of Rhetoric2 is, as the other dates given in the

1 Wilson has usually been dignified in this way : but some authorities, including the Dict. Nat. Biog., deny him knighthood.

2 It was not actually the first in

English, Leonard Coxe having preceded him “about 1524” with an English adaptation, apparently, of Melanchthon. But this is of no critical importance.

32

ELIZABETHAN CRITICISM.

text and notes will show sufficiently, by no means the first

Wilson: his book of the school; nor is it that which has, on the

Art of whole, the most interest for us. But it deserves

Rhetoric; precedence historically because, as no other does, it

keys, or gears, the new critical tendency on to the old technical

rhetoric. The first edition appeared in 1553, dedicated to

Edward VI. Wilson dates his prologue to the second1 on the

7th December 1560; but it does not seem to have been pub-

lished till 1563. Between the date of the first edition and the

writing of this Prologue, Wilson, an exile at Rome, had fallen

into the claws of the Inquisition as author of the book and of

another on Logic; and, as he recounts with natural palpitation,

escaped literally "so as by fire," his prison-house being in

flames.

His two first Books Wilson faithfully devotes to all the old

technicalities—Invention, Disposition, Amplification, "States,"

his attack on and the rest. But his third Book, "Of Elocution,"2

"Inkhorn announces from the first an interest in the matter

terms." very different from the jejune rehashings of the

ancients (and chiefly of those ancients least worth rehashing)

which the mediæval Rhetorics mostly give us. In fact, Wilson

had shown himself alive to the importance of the subject in

the very opening of the work itself3 by recounting, with much

gusto, how "Phavorinus the Philosopher (as Gellius telleth the

tale) did hit a young man over the thumbs very handsomely

for using over-old and over-strange words." And as soon as

he has divided the requirements of Elocution under the four

heads of Plainness, Aptness, Composition, and Exornation, he

opens the stop which has been recognised as his characteristic

one, by denouncing "strange inkhorn terms." He inveighs

against the "far-journeyed gentlemen" who, on their return

home, as they love to go in foreign apparel, so they "powder

their talk with oversea language," one talking French-English,

another "chopping in" with English-Italianated. Professional

men, lawyers and auditors, have their turn of censure, and a real

literary "document" follows in the censure of the "fine cour-

1 My copy is of this, which is the

2 Fol. 82.

3 Fol. 1, verso, at bottom.

fuller.

tier who will talk nothing but Chaucer." Most copious is he

against undue "Latining" of the tongue, in illustration of

which he gives a letter, from a Lincolnshire gentleman, which

may owe royalty either to the Limousin Scholar of Rabelais, or

even to Master Francis' own original, Geoffroy Tory himself.

And he points the same moral (very much after the manner of

Latimer, for whom, as elsewhere appears, he had a great

admiration) by divers facetious stories from his experience,

" when I was in Cambridge, and student in the King's College,"

and from other sources. After which he falls in with Cicero

as to the qualifications of words allowable.

"Aptness" follows: and here Sir Thomas, without knowing

it, has cut at a folly of language revived three hundred years

His dealing and more later than his own time. For he laughs

with Figures. at one who, "seeing a house fair-bulled," said to

his fellow, "Good Lord, what a handsome phrase of building is

this!" Wilson's butt would have been no little thought of by

certain persons at the end of the nineteenth century and the

beginning of the twentieth. Indeed, one may seem to re-

member a sentence about the merits of a "passage" in a

marble chimney-piece, which is a mere echo, conscious or un-

conscious, of his "phrase." The same temper appears in the

longer remarks on Composition ; but when we come to Exor-

nation, "a gorgeous beautifying of the tongue with borrowed

words and change of sentence," Wilson's lease of originality

has run out. He is still in the bondage of the Figures, which

he describes ambitiously as a kind "not equally sparpled1

about the whole oration, but so dissevered and parted as stars

stand in the firmament, or flowers in a garden, or pretty-

devised antiques in a cloth of Arras." The enumeration is

full of character and Elizabethan piquancy; but it still has

the old fault of beginning at the wrong end. When a man

writes even a good oration, much more that far higher thing

a good piece of prose (which may be an oration, if need serves,

or anything else), he does not say to himself, "Now I shall

1 One may regret "sparple" and

"disparple," which are good and pic-

turesque Englishings of e(s)parpiller.

The forms "sparkle" and "disparkle,",

which seem to have been commoner,

are no loss, as being equivocal.

C

34

ELIZABETHAN CRITICISM.

throw in some hyperbaton; now we will exhibit a little anadiplosis; this is the occasion, surely, for a passage of zeugma."

He writes as the spirit moves him, and as the way of art leads.

One could wish, in reading Wilson, for another Sir Thomas,

to deal with the Figurants as he has dealt with the Chaucerists

and the Lincolnshire Latinisers. But we must not expect too

much at once; and lucky are we if we often, or even sometimes, get so bold a striking out into new paths for a true end

as we find in this Art of Rhetoric.

Cheke has left no considerable English work, and he seems

—as it is perhaps inevitable that at least some of the leaders

in every period of innovation should seem—to have

Cheke : his

resolute An-

glicism

and anti-

preciosity.

pushed innovation itself to and over the verge of

crotchet. He was a spelling and pronouncing reformer both in Greek and English; and, classical

scholar and teacher as he was, he seems to have fallen in with that curious survival of “Saxon” rendering of

words not of Saxon origin, the great storehouse of which is

the work of Reginald Pecock a century earlier. But he appears to have been one of the main and most influential

sources of the double stream of tendency observable in Wilson

himself, and still more in Ascham—the tendency on the one

hand to use the classics as models and trainers in the formation of a generally useful and practicable English style, and

on the other to insist that neither from classical nor from

any other sources should English be adulterated by “inkhorn

terms,” as Wilson calls them,1 of any kind—that is to say, by

archaisms, technicalities, preciousnesses, fished up as it were

from the bottom of the ink-pot, instead of simply and naturally

taken as they came from its surface to the pen. What Ascham

tells us that he said of Sallust is the spirit, the centre, the

kernel, of the criticism of the whole school—a dread that is

to say, and a dislike and a censure of what he calls the “un-

contented care to write better than he could.”2 And it must

1 Not that the phrase is of his invention. It seems to have been a

catchword of the time, and occurs in Bale (1543), in Peter Ashton's version

of Jovius (1546), &c.

2 Of course Cheke had in his mind the passage of Quintilian concerning

Julius Florus (see Hist. Crit., i. 313).

be obvious that this sharply formulated censure is itself a critical point de repère of the greatest value. It is well that it was not too much listened to—for the greatest results of English prose and verse in the great period, beginning a few years after Cheke's death and continuing for an old man's lifetime, were the result of this “never contented care,” which still reached something better than content. But if, at this early period, it had had too much way given to it, if the vigorous but somewhat sprawling infancy of Elizabethan English had been bid and let sprawl simply at its pleasure, the consequences could not but have been disastrous.

This criticism of Sallust, which may be found at length in Ascham's Schoolmaster,1 is quite a locus in its kind. It is not His criticism of the justest, for the prepossession of the sentence of Sallust. quoted above (which stands in the forefront of it) colours it all through. It has funny little scholastic lapses in logic, such as the attempt to apply the old brocard Orator est vir bonus dicendi peritus to the disadvantage of Sallust, as compared not only with Cicero but with Cæsar, on the score of morality. It would have been pleasant to observe the countenances of Fausta and Servilia if this had been argued in their joint presence. And the dislike of Thucydides, to which a disliker of Sallust is almost necessarily driven, argues a literary palate not of the most refined. But the disposition of the supposed causes of the faults of Sallust's style, when, having sown his wild oats, he took to literature, and borrowed his vocabulary from Cato and Varro, and his method from Thucydides himself, is an exceedingly ingenious piece of critical pleading. Even if it will not hold water, it shows us a stage of criticism advanced, in some directions, beyond anything that classical or mediæval times can show. The other great “place” of Cheke's writing occurs in his letter2 to Hoby on that learned knight's translation of Castiglione, with its solemn judgment (the author, though but in middle age, was ill, and in fact almost dying), “I am of this opinion, that our own tongue

1 Ed. Arber, pp. 154-159.

2 This may be found in Arber's Introduction to the book just cited, p. 5 ; or in Professor Raleigh's ed. of Hoby (London, 1900), pp. 12, 13.

should be written clean and pure, unmixed and unmangled

with borrowing of other tongues, wherein if we take no heed

betimes, ever borrowing and never paying, she shall be fain to

keep house as a bankrupt." The analogy, of course, is a false

one:-there is no need to pay, nor possibility of payment, any

more than a conquering monarchy needs to fear the repayment

of the tribute it draws from others, or than a sturdy plant

need dread bankruptcy because it owes nourishment to earth,

and air, and the rain of heaven. But once more the position

is a definite, and not a wholly untenable, critical position : and

Cheke shows himself here as at once engineer and captain of it.

The chief representative of this school is, however, beyond

question, the always agreeable, and but seldom other than

admirable, author of Toxophilus and The School-

Ascham. master himself.1 His positive achievements in Eng-

lish literature do not here directly concern us; nor does the

debate between those who regard him as a Euphuist, before

Euphuism, and those who will have him to be the chief ex-

ample of the plain style in early Elizabethan literature. I

confess myself to be on the side of the latter; though I know

what the former mean. But it is with what Ascham thought

as a critic, not with what he did as a writer, that we are here

busy; and on this there is no reasonable opening for serious

difference of opinion. Ascham's critical position and opinions

are clear, not only from his two famous and pleasant little

books, but from the constant literary references in his letters,

ranging from elaborate lucubrations on the study of the classics

to an amusing little Cambridge fling at the older university,

where, as we learn from a letter of exactly the middle of the

century, taste was in so shocking a condition that Oxford men

actually paid more attention to Lucian and Apuleius than to

Cicero and Xenophon.2

1 For these two books Mr Arber's

excellent reprints can hardly be bet-

tered. But for our purposes the Letters

are also needed ; and these, with other

things, will be found in Giles' edition of

the Works, 3 vols. in 4, London, 1864-65.

2 Quid omnes Oxonienses sequuntur

plane nescio, sed. ante aliquot menses

in Aula incidi in quendam illius Aca-

demice, qui nimium præferendo Luci-

anum, Plutarchum et Herodianum, Sene-

cam, A. Gellium, et Apuleium, utramque

linguam in nimis senescentem et eflitam

ætatem compingere mihi videbatur-

Giles, i. 190. The whole letter (to

Sturm) is worth reading.

ASCHAM.

37

The Toxophilus itself is a critical document in parts, both for

the initial manifesto of his desire “to write this English matter

His in the English tongue for English men,” and for the

patriotism. more elaborate defence of the proceeding (a defence

repeated in the numerous Latin letters accompanying the copies

of the book he sent to his friends), as well as for one of those

hits at Romance which were characteristic of Renaissance

scholars too generally, and were particularly to be expected in

very moral and rather prosaic persons like Ascham. But we

necessarily turn to the Schoolmaster for a full exposition of

Ascham’s critical ethos, and we find it.

A tendency rather to slight poetry, one great heresy concern-

ing it (of which more presently), and the above-mentioned

His horror of contempt or even horror of romance—these are

Romance, the worst things to be noted here. All these are

connected with a wider critical heresy, which is prevalent in

England to this day, and which emerges most interestingly in

this infancy of English criticism. This heresy is the valuing of

examples, and even of whole kinds, of literary art, not according

to their perfection on their own artistic standards, not accord-

ing to the quantity or quality of artistic pleasure which they are

fitted to give; but according to certain principles—patriotic,

political, ethical, or theological—which the critic holds or does

not hold, as the case may be. This fallacy being one of those

proper—or, at least, inseparably accidental—to the human in-

tellect, is of course perceptible enough in antiquity itself. It is,

as we have seen, rife in Plato, and more rife in Plutarch; and

there is no doubt that the devotion of the Renaissance to the

greatest of Greek philosophers and prosemen, to the most enter-

taining of Greek biographers and moralists, had not a little to do

with its reappearance, though the struggle of the Reformation,

and the national jealousies which this struggle bred or helped,

had more. But no one has given more notable examples of it

than Ascham by his attack on “books of feigned chivalry,” in

Toxophilus,1 and his well-known censure of the Morte d’Arthur

in The Schoolmaster.2

1 P. 19, ed. Arber. The passage con-

tains a stroke at monasticism. 2 P. 80, ed. Arber.

38

ELIZABETHAN CRITICISM.

Than this book there was, at Ascham's date, no more exquisite

example of English prose in existence. There is not to this day

and of the a book, either in prose or in verse, which has more

Morte d'Arthur. of the true Romantic charm. There are few better

instances anywhere of subtly combined construction

of story than are to be found in some of its parts; and, to a

catholic judgment, which busies itself with the matter and spirit

of a book, there are few books which teach a nobler temper of

mind, which inculcate with a more wonderful blending of stern-

ness and sympathy the great moral that "the doer shall suffer,"

that "for all these things God shall bring us into judgment,"

or which display more accomplished patterns of man and

sweeter examples of woman. Yet Ascham (and he had read

the book) saw in it nothing but "open manslaughter and

bold bawdry."

Apart from this somewhat Philistine prudery—which oc-

cupies itself more reasonably with Italian novelle, and the

translations of them into English—Ascham's criticism is of a

piece with that of the whole school in all but a very few points.

He differed with Wilson, and with most of the scholars of his

time, on the subject of translation, which he rightly enough

regarded as a useful engine of education, but as quite incapable

of giving any literary equivalent for the original. He agreed

both with Wilson and with Cheke as to the impropriety of

adulterating English with any foreign tongue, ancient or

modern. He was, none the less, an exceedingly fervent Cicer-

onian and devotee of the golden age of Latin. And when we

come in one1 of his letters to Sturm on the name of Giovan-

battista Pigna, the rival of Cinthio Giraldi, there seems to be

established a contact, of the most interesting, between English

and Italian criticism. But (as indeed we might have expected)

no allusion to Pigna's view of the despised romances is even

hinted : it is his dealing with the aureolum libellum of Horace

that Ascham has read, his dealings with Aristotle and Sophocles

that he wishes to read.

Putting his theory and his practice together, and neglecting

1 Thought to be his last, and written in Dec. 1568 ; ed. Giles, ii. 189. The correspondence with Sturm is, as we

should expect, particularly literary.

for the moment his moral "craze," we can perceive in him a

His general tolerably distinct ideal of English prose, which he

critical atti- has only not illustrated by actual criticism of the

tude to Prose, reviewing sort, because the material was so scanty.

This prose is to be fashioned with what may be excusably called

a kind of squint—looking partly at Latin and Greek construc-

tion and partly at English vernacular usage. It does not seem

that, great as was his reverence for Cheke, he was bitten by

Cheke's mania for absolute Teutonism ; nor does he appear to

have gone to the extreme of Latimer and Latimer's admirer,

Wilson, in caring to mingle merely familiar speech with his

ordered vernacular. But he went some way in this direction :

he was by no means proof against that Delilah of alliteration which,

like a sort of fetch or ghost of the older alliterative prosody,

bewitched the mid-sixteenth-century verse and prose of Eng-

land, and had not lost hold on Spenser himself. And he had

belief in certain simple Figures of the antithetic and parallel

kind. But he was, above all, a schoolmaster — as even being

dead he spoke—to English literature ; and his example and his

precepts together tended to establish a chastened, moderately

classical, pattern of writing, which in the next generation pro-

duced the admirable English prose of Hooker, and was not

without influence on the less accomplished, but more germinal

and protreptic, style of Jonson.

We must praise him less when we come to poetry. The

history of the craze for classical metre and against rhyme in

and to England, which practically supplies our earliest sub-

Poetry. ject of purely critical debate, is a very curious one,

and may—perhaps must—be considered from more points of

view than one, before it is rightly and completely understood.

At first sight it looks like mere mid-summer madness—the

work of some Puck of literature—if not even as the incursion

into the calm domains of scholarship and criticism of that

popular delirium tremens, which has been often illustrated in

politics. Shifting of the standpoint, and more careful con-

sideration, will discover some excuses for it, as well as much

method in it. But it must be regarded long, and examined

carefully, before the real fact is discovered — the fact that,

40

ELIZABETHAN CRITICISM.

mischievous and absurd as it was in itself, unpardonable as

are the attempts to revive it, or something like it, at this time

of day, it was in its own day a kind of beneficent " distemper "

—a necessary, if morbid, stage in the development of English

prosody and English criticism.

Inasmuch as the most obvious and indubitable, as well as

universal, cause of the craze was the profound Renaissance

The craze admiration for the classics, it was inevitable that

for Classical something of the kind should make its appearance

Metres. in most European countries. But other and coun-

teracting causes prevented it from assuming, in any of them,

anything like the importance that it attained in England.

Unrhymed classical metres, like almost every literary inno-

vation of the time, had been first attempted in Italy; but

the established and impregnable supremacy of forms like the

Sonnet, the Canzone, the ottava and terza rima, put rhyme out

of real danger there. They were attempted in France. But

French had for centuries possessed a perfectly well-defined

system of prosody, adapted and adequate to the needs and

nature of the language. And, moreover, the singularly atonic

quality of this language, its want not only of the remotest

approach to quantity but even of any decided accent, made

the experiment not merely ridiculous, as indeed it mostly was

in English, but all but impossible. Spanish was following

Italian, and did not want to follow anything else: and German

was not in case to compete.

With English the patient was very much more predisposed

to the disease. Not only two, but practically three, different

Special systems of prosody, which were really to some extent

wants of opposed to each other, and might well seem more op-

English posed than they actually were, disputed, in practice,

Prosody. the not too fertile or flourishing field of English

poetry. There was the true Chaucerian system of blended Eng-

lish prosody, the legitimate representative of the same composite

influences which have moulded English language throughout.

These influences had continued, and their results had been

slowly developed through the half-chaotic beginnings of

Middle English verse, and then, with almost premature sud-

CLASSICAL METRES.

41

clenness, perfected up to a certain stage by Chaucer himself.

This system combined—though not yet in perfect freedom—

Its kinds: the strict syllabic foot-division of the French with

(1) Chau- the syllabic licence of Anglo-Saxon, so as to produce

cerian. a system of syllabic equivalence similar in nature

to, if not yet fully in practice freer than, that of the Greek

Iambic trimeter. It admitted a considerable variety of metres,

the base-integers of which were the octosyllable and deca-

syllable, with lines of six, twelve, and others occasionally, com-

bined in pairs or arranged in stanzas of more or less intricate

forms. But—by a historic accident which has even yet to be

rather taken as found than fully explained—nobody for more

than a hundred years had been able to produce really good

regular1 poetry in Southern English by this metre, and certain

changes in pronunciation and vocabulary—especially the disuse

of the final vocalised e — were putting greater and greater

difficulties in the way of its practice.

Secondly, there was the revived alliterative metre, either

genuine—that is to say, only roughly syllabic and not rhymed,

(2) Alliter- but rhythmed nearer to the anapæstic form than to

ative. any other—or allied with rhyme, and sometimes

formed into stanzas of very considerable intricacy. This,

which had arisen during the fourteenth century, no one

quite knows how or where, apparently in the North, and

which had maintained a vigorous though rather artificial

life during the fifteenth, had not wholly died out, being rep-

resented partly by the ballad metre, by doggerel twelves,

fourteeners, and other long shambling lines, and by a still

lively tendency towards alliteration itself, both in metred

verse and in prose. Latterly, during Ascham's own youth,

a sort of rapprochement between these two had made the

fourteeners and Alexandrines, rather less doggerelised, very

general favourites; but had only managed to communicate to

them a sort of lolloping amble, very grievous and sickening to

the delicate ear.

Thirdly, and in close connection with this combination,

1 There had, of course, been some charming jets of folk-song in ballad, carol,

and what not.

Wyatt, Surrey, and other poets had, by imitating Italian

(3) Italian- models, especially in the sonnet, striven to raise, to

ated. bind together, to infuse with energy and stiffen with

backbone, the ungainly shambling body of English verse: and

Surrey, again following the Italians, had tried, with some suc-

cess, the unrhymed decasyllable, soon to be so famous as blank

verse.

Now critical observation at the time might survey this field

with view as extensive and intensive as it could apply, and be

Deficiencies far from satisfied with the crops produced. To re-

of all three. present the first system there was nobody but

Chaucer, who, great and greatly admired as he was, was

separated from the men of 1550 by a period of time almost

as long as that which separates us from Pope, and by a much

greater gulf of pronunciation and accent. Nobody could write

like Chaucer—unless the Chaucerian Chorizontes are right in

attributing The Court of Love to this time, in which case there

was some one who could write very much like Chaucer indeed.

There was no Langland, and nobody who could write in the

least like Langland. In sheer despair, men of talent like

Skelton, when they were not Chaucerising heavily, were

indulging (of course with more dulcet intervals now and then)

in mere wild gambades of doggerel.

But it will be said, Was there not the new Italianated style

of poets of such promise as Wyatt and Surrey? There was.

Yet it must be remembered that Wyatt and Surrey themselves

are, after all, poets of more promise than performance; that

their promise itself looks much more promising to us, seeing

as we do its fulfilment in Spenser and onward, than it need

have done, or indeed could do, to contemporaries; that stalwart

Protestants and stout Englishmen feared and loathed the

Italianation of anything English; and lastly, that even the

prosody of Wyatt and Surrey is, in a very high degree, experi-

mental, tentative, incomplete. We laugh, or are disgusted, at

the twists and tortures applied by the hexametrists to our poor

mother tongue; but Wyatt at least puts almost as awkward

constraints on her.

It is not surprising that, in the presence of these unsatisfying

things, and in the nonage of catholic literary criticism, men

should have turned for help to those classics which

The tempta-

tions of

Criticism in

this respect.

were the general teachers and helpers of the time.

There was indeed—already published just as Ascham

had attained his year of discretion—a treatise, by

the greatest man of letters for some fifteen hundred years

at least, which contained the germ of a warning.

But it is

not likely that Ascham or any of his good Cambridge friends

had seen Trissino’s translation of the De Vulgari Eloquentio ; and, if

any had, it would have been a stroke of genius to carry Dante’s

generalisation from the Romance tongues further.

To almost any

man of the Renaissance it would have seemed half sacrilege and

half madness to examine ancient and modern literatures on the

same plane, and decide what was germane to each and what

common to all.

Greek Prosody had been good enough, with

very minor alterations, for Latin ; how should any of these

upstart modern tongues refuse what had been good enough for

both ?

And let it be remembered, too, that they were only half

wrong Greek and Latin did provide up to a certain point—that

of the foot as distinguished from the metre—examples

which, duly guarded, could be quite safely followed, which

indeed could not and cannot be neglected without loss and

danger for English.

It was when they went further, and

endeavoured to impose the classical combinations of feet on

English, that they fell.

Yet even from the first they had glimpses and glimmerings

Its

adventurers :

Ascham

himself.

of truth which might have warned them; while in

their very errors they often display that combination

of independence and practical spirit which is the

too often undervalued glory of English criticism.

Ascham himself—besotted as he is with wrath against “ our

1 It is curious that, in this very dé-

but of English criticism, the incivility

with which critics are constantly and

too justly charged makes its appear-

ance. Ascham would seem to have

been a good-natured soul enough. Yet

he abuses rhyme and its partisans in

the true “Père Duchêne” style which

some critics still affect. “To follow

the Goths in rhyming instead of the

Greeks in versifying” is “ to eat acorns

with swine, when we may eat wheat

bread among men.” Rhymers are “a

rude multitude,” “rash, ignorant

heads,” “wandering blindly in their

foul wrong way,” &c.

44

ELIZABETHAN CRITICISM.

rude beggarly rhyming," confident as he is that the doggerel of

his old friend Bishop Watson of Lincoln—

" All travellers do gladly report great praise of Ulysses,

For that he knew many men's manners, and saw many cities,"—

exhibits 1 as " right quantitie" of syllables and true order of

versifying as either Greek or Latin—yet saw 2 that " our English

tongue doth not well receive the nature of Carmen Heroicum,

because dactylus, the apptest foot for that verse, is seldom found

in English." Truly it is not; your dactyl is apt to play the

" Waler"—to buck under an English rider, and either throw

him altogether, or force the alteration of the pace to anapæsts.

The best apparent dactylics in English—the verses of Kingsley's

Andromeda—are not really dactylic-hexameters at all, they are

five-foot anapæstics, with a very strong anacrusis at the be-

ginning, and a weak hypercatalectic syllable at the end. And

with this fatal confession of Ascham (who had not a very

poetical head), that of Campion, an exquisite poet and a keen

though warped critic, coincides, as we shall see, a generation

later. But the thing had to be done; and it was done, or at

least attempted.

When the craze first took form in England we do not exactly

know. Ascham observes vaguely that " this misliking of rhym-

Watson and ing beginnet h not now of any newfangle singularity,

Drant. but hath been long been misliked, and that of men

of greatest learning and deepest judgment." 3 We all think that

the persons who agree with us are men of great learning and deep

judgment, so that matter may be passed over. But apparently

the thing was one, and not the best, of the fruits of that study

of the classics, and specially of Greek, which, beginning at

Oxford, passed thence to Cambridge, and was taken up so

busily in Ascham's own college, St John's. Thomas Watson, 4

1 Schoolmaster, ed. cit., p. 73. As-

cham actually quotes the Greek and

the Latin of Homer and Horace, and

declares Watson's stuff to be made as

" naturally" as the one and as " aptly"

as the other !

2 Ibid., p. 145.

3 P. 147. The extraordinary con-

fusion of mind of the time is illus-

trated by Ascham's sheltering himself

behind Quintilian !

4 Not to be confounded with Thomas

Watson, the author of the Hecatom-

pathia, who came later, and was an

Oxford man.

the Bishop of Lincoln, above referred to, was Master of the

College ; Ascham himself, it is hardly necessary to say, was a

fellow of it. And still descending in the collegiate hierarchy, it

was an undergraduate of St John's, Thomas Drant, who some-

what later drew up rules for Anglo-Classic versifying—rules

that occupied Spenser and Harvey, producing some interesting

letters and some very deplorable doggerel. Drant seems to

have been the “legislator of Parnassus” to the innovators; but

his “rules” are not known to exist, and what we have of his

does not bear on the special subject.

Mischievous craze as it was, however,1 it had the merit of

turning the attention of Englishmen to really critical study of

poetry, and it appears, more or less, as the motif of most of the

group of critical writings, from Gascoigne's Notes of Instruction

to Daniel's Defence of Rhyme, which we shall now discuss.

In the most interesting little treatise2 which heads or initials3

the now goodly roll of books in English criticism, George

Gascoigne. does not make any reference to the craze. The tract

was written at the request of an Italian friend, Eduardo

Donati. It is exceedingly short; but as full of matter, and very

good matter, as need be. In duty bound Gascoigne begins with

insistence on fine invention, without which neither “thundering

in rym ram ruff, quoth my master Chaucer,” nor “rolling in

pleasant words,” nor “abounding in apt vocables,” will suffice.

But he passes over this very swiftly, as over trite and obvious

expressions,4 suitableness of phrase, &c., and attacks the great

literary question of the time, Prosody.

1 Some authorities have been much

too mild towards it. For instance,

the late Mr Henry Morley, who says,

“ Thomas Drant, of course, did not

suppose that his rules were sufficient.”

This is charitable, but outside, or rather

against, the evidence.

2 Certain Notes of Instruction con-

cerning the making of verse or rhyme

in English, ed. Arber (with The Steel

Glass, &c.), pp. 31-41, London, 1868.

Originally in the 4to edition of Gas-

coigne's Poems (London, 1575). Mr

Spingarn sees indebtedness in it to

Ronsard.

3 The observations of Ascham, Wil-

son, and the others being incidental

merely.

4 “If I should undertake to write

in praise of a gentlewoman, I would

neither praise her crystal eye nor her

cherry lip.”

46

ELIZABETHAN CRITICISM.

He begins his attack by the modest and half-apologetic request, "This may seem a presumptuous order," that, what-

His Notes of ever the verse chosen be, it be regular, and not Instruction. wobbling backwards and forwards between twelve

and fourteen syllables on no principle. Then he enjoins the maintenance of regular and usual accent or quantity ;

and in so doing insists on a standard in regard to which not merely Wyatt and Surrey earlier, but even Spenser later,

were much less scrupulous. "Treasure," he says, you must use with the first syllable long and the second short : you

must not make it "treasùre." And then he makes a very curious observation :-

"Commonly nowadays in English rhymes, for I dare not call them English verses, we use none other order but a foot of

two syllables," to wit, the Iamb. "We have," he says, "in other times used other kinds of metres," as

"No wight | in the world | that wealth | can attain,"

(i.e., anapæsts), while "our Father Chaucer had used the same liberty in feet and measures that the Latinists do use," that is to

say, syllabic equivalence of two shorts to a long. And he laments the tyranny of the Iamb ; but says, "we must take the

ford as we find it."

Then, after some particular cautions,—a renewed one as to quantifying words aright—"understànd," not "undérstand,"

&c., as to using as many monosyllables as possible (it is amusing to read this and remember the opposite caution of Pope)—

he comes to rhyme, and warns his scholar against rhyme without reason. Alliteration is to be moderate: you must not "hunt a

letter to death." Unusual words are to be employed carefully and with a definite purpose to "draw attentive reading." Be

clear and sensible.2 Keep English order, and invert substantive and adjective seldom and cautiously. Be moderate in the use

1 Gascoigne does not use this divi-

sion, or - and ˇ, but ' and ' for long

and short, ~ (circumflex) for com-

mon, and indented lines (⋀⋀⋀ and

⋀W W) for dissyllabic and trisyllabic

foot arrangements.

2 "For the haughty obscure verse

doth not much delight, and the verse

that is too easy is like a tale of a roasted

horse."

also of that “shrewd fellow, poetical licence,” who actually reads

“hea|ven” for “heavn” !1

As for the pause or Cæsura, Gascoigne is not injudicious.

“The pause,” he says, “will stand best in the middle” of an

octosyllable, at the fourth syllable in a “verse of ten,” at the

sixth (or middle again) of an Alexandrine, and at the eighth

in a fourteener. But it is at the discretion of the writer

in Rhythm royal: “it forceth not where the pause be till

the end of the line”—and this liberty will assuredly draw

to more.

Next he enumerates stanzas:—Rhyme royal itself, ballades,

sonnets, Dizains, and Sixains, Virelays, and the “Poulter’s

measure,” of twelve and fourteen alternately, to which his own

contemporaries were so unfortunately addicted. You must

“finish the sentence and meaning at the end of every staff”: and

(by the way) he has “forgotten a notable kind of rhyme called

riding rhyme, which is what our father Chaucer used in his

Canterbury tales, and in divers other delectable and light enter-

prises.” It is good for “a merry tale,” Rhyme royal for a

“grave discourse,” Ballads and Sonnets for love-poems, &c., and

it would be best, in his judgment, to keep Poulter’s measure for

Psalms and hymns. And so he makes an end, “doubting his

own ignorance.”

The chief points about this really capital booklet are as

follows :—Gascoigne’s recognition of the importance of overhaul-

Their cap- ing English Prosody ; his good sense on the matter of

ital value. the cæsura, and of Chaucer’s adoption of the prin-

ciples of equivalenced scansion ; his acknowledgment, with regret,

of the impoverishment which, in the sterility of the mid-six-

teenth century before Spenser, was a fact, as resulting from the

tyranny of the iamb ; the shrewdness of his general remarks ;

and, last but not least, his entire silence about the new versify-

ing, the “Dranting of Verses.” It is possible (for though

he was at Cambridge he seems to admit that he did not acquire

1 See Mitford, Harmony of Lan-

syllable “impossible.” A little later,

guage, p. 105, who thinks the licence

again, Guest thinks the dis-syllable

just the other way, and indeed roundly

pronounces the pronunciation in one

“uncouth and vulgar.” A most docu-

mentary disagreement !

48

ELIZABETHAN CRITICISM.

any great scholarship there) that he had not come into contact

with any one who took interest in this: but it is improbable

that it would have appealed to his robust sense of poetry,

unsicklied by Harvey's pedantry, and not misled by Spenser's

classical enthusiasm.

At this time, however, or not long after—the Notes must have

been written between 1572 and 1575, and the correspondence of

Spenser and Harvey actually appeared in 1579—these other

persons were thinking a great deal about the classical metres.

The Five Letters (“Three” and “Two”1—not to be confused

with the Four Letters which Harvey issued long afterwards

about Greene) are full of the subject, and of poetical criticism

generally. They, together with the controversy which arose

over Gosson's School of Abuse, and which indirectly produced

Sidney's Apology for Poetry, make the years 1579-1580 as

notable in the history of English criticism as the appearances

of Euphues and The Shepherd's Calendar make them in that of

creative literature.

Spenser's first letter informs Harvey that “they [Sidney

and Dyer] have proclaimed in their ᾽αρειωπάγω2 [the literary

Spenser and cénacle of Leicester House] a general surceasing and

Harvey. silence of bald rhymers, and also of the very best

too: instead whereof they have, by the authority of their

whole Senate, prescribed certain laws and rules of quantities

of English syllables for English verse, having had thereof

already great practice, and drawn me to their faction.” And

later, “I am more in love with English versifying than with

rhyming, which I should have done long since if I would have

followed your counsel.” He hints, however, gently, that

Harvey's own verses (these coterie writers always keep the

name “verses” for their hybrid abortions) once or twice “make

a breach in Master Drant's rules.” Which was, of course, a

very dreadful thing, only to be “condoned tanto poetæ.” He

requites Harvey with a few Iambics, which he “dare warrant

precisely perfect for the feet, and varying not one

1 See Grosart's Works of Gabriel Harvey, vol. i. pp. 6-150. Parts will be

found in the Globe edition of Spenser,

pp. 706-710.

2 I am not responsible for the eccen-tricities of this form.

SPENSER AND HARVEY.

49

inch from the Rule." And then follows the well-known piece beginning—

"Unhappy verse, the witness of my unhappy state,"

where certainly the state must have been bad if it was as infelicitous as the verse.

Not such was Gabriel Harvey that he might take even a polite correction ; and his reply is a proper donnish setting-down of a clever but presumptuous youth. He respects the Areopagus—indeed they were persons of worship, and Harvey was a roturier—more than Spenser can or will suppose, and he likes the trimeters (indeed, though poor things, they were Spenser's own after all, and such as no man but Spenser could have written in their foolish kind) more than Spenser "can or will easily believe." But—and then follows much reviewing in the now stale hole-picking kind, which has long been abandoned, save by the descendants of Milbourne and Kenrick, and a lofty protestation that "myself never saw your gorbellied master's rules, nor heard of them before."

The Three Letters which follow 1 are distributed in subject between an Earthquake (which has long since ceased to quake for us) and the hexameters. They open with a letter from Spenser, in which he broaches the main question, "Whether our English accent will endure the Hexameter ?" and doubts. Yet he has a hankering after it, encloses his own—

"See ye the blindfolded pretty god, that feathered archer," &c.,

and prays that Harvey would either follow the rules of the great Drant, indorsed by Sidney, or else send his own. Harvey replies in double. The first part is some very tragical mirth about the earthquake ; the second, "A Gallant Familiar Letter," tackles the question of versification.

This gallant familiarity might possibly receive from harsh critics the name of uneasy coxcombry ; but it is at any rate clear that the author has set about the matter very seriously. He expresses delight that Sidney and Dyer, "the two very diamonds of her Majesty's Court," have begun to help forward

1 In order of composition, not of publication.

D

50

ELIZABETHAN CRITICISM.

"the exchange of barbarous and balductum1 rhymes with

artificial verses" ; thinks their "lively example" will be much

better than Ascham's "dead advertisement" in the Schoolmaster.

He would like (as should we) to have Drant's prosody. His

own Rules and Precepts will probably not be very different ;

but he will take time before drafting them finally. He thinks

(reasonably enough) that before framing a standard English

Grammar or Rhetoric (therein including Prosody), a standard

orthography must first be agreed upon. And he suggests that

"we beginners" (this from the author of these truly "barbarous

and balductum" antics to the author of the Faerie Queene is

distinctly precious) have the advantage, like Homer and

Ennius, of setting examples. "A New Year's Gift to M.

George Bilchaunger," in very doleful hexameters, follows, and

after a little gird at Spenser's "See ye the Blindfoldèd," another

sprout of Harvey's brain in the same kind, which has been,

perhaps, more, and more deservedly, laughed at than any of

these absurdities, except the scarcely sane jargon-doggerel of

Stanyhurst—

"What might I call this tree? a Laurell? o bonny Laurell!

Needs to thy boughs will I bow this knee, and veil my bonetto ;"

with yet another—

"Since Galateo2 came in, and Tuscanism gan usurp."

He thinks that the author of this last "wanted but some

delicate choice elegant poesy" of Sidney's or Dyer's for a good

pattern. After some further experiments of his own, or his

brother's, in hexametring some of Spenser's own "emblems"

in the Calendar, he turns to Spenser himself, whom, it seems,

he ranks next the same "incomparable and miraculous genius

in the catalogue of our very principal English Aristarchi." He

1 This word, which is certainly a

cousin of "balderdash," is a good

example of the slang and jargon so

often mixed with their preciousness by

the Elizabethans. Nash borrowed it

from Harvey to use against him ; and

it in his Virgil. Stanyhurst's hexa-

meters, by the way (vide Mr Arber's

Reprint in the English Scholars

Library, No. 10, London, 1880), are,

thanks partly to their astounding lingo,

among the maddest things in English

literature ; but his prose prefatory

matter, equally odd in phrase, has

some method in its madness.

2 La Casa's book of etiquette and

behaviour.

proceeds to speak of some of that earlier work which, as in

The Dying Pelican, is certainly, or in the Dreams, possibly, lost.

After which he writes himself down for all time in the famous

passage about the Faerie Queene, which he had "once again

nigh forgotten," but which he now sends home "in neither

better nor worse case than he found her." "As for his judg-

ment," he is "void of all judgment if Spenser's Nine Comedies

[also lost] are not nearer Ariosto's than that Elvish Queene is

to the Orlando, which " Spenser "seems to emulate, and hopes

to overgo." And so he ends his paragraph with the yet more

famous words, "If so be the Faery Queene be fairer in your eye

than the Nine Muses, and Hobgoblin run away with the

garland from Apollo, mark what I say, and yet I will not say

what I thought, but there an end for this once, and fare you

well till God or some good Angel put you in a better mind!"

Which words let all who practise criticism grave in their

memories, and recite them daily, adding, "Here, but for the

grace of God——!" if they be modest and fear Nemesis.

After an interval, however, Harvey returns to actual

criticism, and shows himself in rather better figure by pro-

testing, in spite of "five hundred Drants," against the altera-

tion of the quantity of English words by accenting "Majesty"

and "Manfully," and "Carpenter" on the second syllable.

And he falls in with Gascoigne on the subject of such words

as "Heaven." Nor could he, even if he had been far less of a

pedant and coxcomb, have given better or sounder doctrine

than that with which he winds up. "It is the vulgar and

natural mother Prosody, that alone worketh the feat, as the

only supreme foundress and reformer of Position, Diphthong,

Orthography, or whatsoever else; whose affirmatives are

nothing worth if she once conclude the negative." And for

this sound doctrine, not unsoundly enlarged upon, and tipped

with a pleasant Latin farewell to "mea domina Immerita, mea

bellissima Collina Clouta," let us leave Gabriel in charity.1

1 The further letters to Spenser,

which Dr Grosart has borrowed from

the Camden Society's Letter-book of

Gabriel Harvey, touch literary matters

not seldom, but with no new im-

portant deliverances. In the later

(1592) Four Letters, the embroidery

of railing at the dead Greene and the

living Nash has almost entirely hidden

the literary canvas.

52

ELIZABETHAN CRITICISM.

Meanwhile the strong critical set of the time—so interesting,

if not so satisfying, after the absolute silence of criticism in

The Puritan English earlier—was being shown in another direc-

attack on tion by a different controversy, to which, as we have

Poetry. seen, Spenser makes allusion. The points which

chiefly interested him at the moment were formal; those to

which we now come were partly of the same class though

of another species, partly transcending form.

Stephen Gosson is one of the persons of whom, as is by

Gosson. no means always the case, it would really be useful to know

more than we do know about their private history

and character. What disgust, what disappointment,

what tardy development of certain strains of temper and dis-

position he underwent, we do not know; but something of

the kind there must have been to make a young man of four-

and-twenty, a fair scholar, already of some note for both

dramatic and poetical writing, and obviously of no mean in-

tellectual powers, swing violently round, and denounce plays,

and poems, and almost literature generally, as the works of

the Devil. It is quite insufficient to ejaculate “Puritanism!”

or “Platonism!” for neither of these was a new thing, and

the question is why Gosson was not affected by them earlier

or later.

Let us, however, now as always, abstain from speculation

when we have fact; and here we have at least three very

notable facts — Gosson’s School of Abuse,1 with its satellite

tractates, Lodge’s untitled Reply,2 and the famous Defence of

Poesy or Apology for Poetry3 which Sidney (to whom Gosson

had rashly dedicated his book) almost certainly intended as a

counterblast, though either out of scorn, as Spenser hints, or

(more probably from what we know of him) out of amiable

1 Reprinted by Mr Arber, with its

almost immediately subsequent Apol-

ogy. I wish he had added the Eph-em-

erides of Philo which accompanied

the Apology, and the Plays Confuted of

three years later; for these books—

very small and very difficult of access

—add something to the controversy.

2 Several times reprinted: as for in-

stance by the present writer in Eliza-

bethan and Jacobean Pamphlets (Lon-

don, 1892).

3 Also frequently (indeed oftener)

reprinted, as by Arber, London, 1868 ;

Shuckburgh, Cambridge, 1891 ; Cook,

Boston (U.S.A.), 1890.

and courteous dislike to requite a compliment with an insult,

he takes no direct notice of Gosson at any time.

The School of Abuse (which is written in such a style as

almost to out-Euphuise the contemporary Euphues itself) is

The School critical wholly from the moral side, and with refer-

ence to the actual, not the necessary or possible,

state of poetry. There are even, the author says, some good

plays, including at least one of his own; but the whole of

ancient poetry (he says little or nothing of modern) is infected

by the blasphemy and immorality of Paganism, and nearly the

whole of the modern stage is infected by the abuses of the

theatre—of which Gosson speaks in terms pretty well identical

with those which Puritan teachers had for some years past

been using in sermon and treatise. But outside of the moral

and religious line he does not step: he is solely occupied with

the lies and the licence of poets and players.

Lodge’s reply (the title-page of it has been lost, but

it may be the Honest Excuses to which Gosson refers as

Lodge’s having been published against him) is almost en-

tirely an appeal to authority, seasoned with a little

personal invective. Lodge strings together all the classical

names he can think of, with a few mediæval, to show that

Poetry, Music (which Gosson had also attacked), and even

the theatre, are not bad things. But he hardly attempts any

independent justification of them as good ones, especially from

the purely literary point of view. In fact, his pamphlet—

though interesting as critical work from the associate of great

creators in drama, himself a delightful minor poet and no

contemptible pioneer of English prose fiction—is merely one

of the earliest adaptations in English of an unreal defence to an

attack, logically as unreal, though actually dangerous. The

charlatan-geniuses of the Renaissance, with Cornelius Agrippa1

at their head, had refurbished the Platonic arguments for the

sincere but pestilent reformers of the Puritan type. Lodge

and his likes, in all countries from Italy outward and from

Boccaccio downward, accept the measure of the shadowy daggers

of their opponents, and attempt to meet them with weapons

1 In his De Vanitate Scientiarum (1527).

54

ELIZABETHAN CRITICISM.

of similar temper. The only reality of the debate is in its

accidents, not in its main purport. But the assailants, in

England at least, had for the time an unfair advantage, because

the defence could point to no great poet but Chaucer. The

real answer was being provided by one of themselves in the

shape of The Faerie Queene.

Sidney's book, though pervaded by the same delusion, is one

of far more importance. It is not free from faults—in fact, it

Sidney's

has often been pointed out that some of Sidney's doc-

Apology for trines, if they had been accepted, would have made

Poetry.

the best efforts of Elizabethan literature abortive.

But the defects of detail, of which more presently, are mixed

with admirable merits; the critic shows himself able, as Gosson

had not been able, to take a wide and catholic, instead of a

peddling and pettifogging, view of morality. Instead of merely

stringing authorities together like Lodge, he uses authority

indeed, but abuses it not; and while not neglecting form he

does not give exclusive attention to it.

His main object, indeed (though he does not know it), is the

defence, not so much of Poetry as of Romance. He follows

the ancients in extending the former term to any prose fiction :

but it is quite evident that he would have, in his mimesis, a

quality of imagination which Aristotle nowhere insists upon,

and which is in the best sense Romantic. And of this poetry, or

romance, he makes one of the loftiest conceptions possible.

All the hyperboles of philosophers or of poets, on order, justice,

harmony, and the like, are heaped upon Poetry herself, and all

the Platonic objections to her are retorted or denied.1

It has been said that there is no direct reference to Gosson

1 Our two chief English - writing

authorities, Mr Symonds and Mr Spin-

garn, are at odds as to Sidney's indebt-

edness to the Italians. He quotes them

but sparingly — Petrarch, Boccaccio,

Landino, among the older writers, Fra-

castoro and Scaliger alone, I think, of

the moderns—and Mr Symonds thought

that he owed them little or nothing.

Mr Spingarn, on the other hand, repre-

sents him as following them all in

general, and Minturno in particular.

As usual, it is a case of the gold and

silver shield. My own reading of the

Italian writers of 1530-80 leaves me in

no doubt that Sidney knew them, or

some of them, pretty well. But his

attitude is very different from theirs

as a whole, and already significant of

some specially English characteristics

in criticism.

in the Apology, though the indirect references are fairly clear.

Abstract Sidney begins (in the orthodox Platonic or Ciceronian manner) somewhat off his subject, by telling

of it. how the right virtuous Edward Wotton, and he himself, once at the Emperor's Court learnt horsemanship of John Pietro

Pugliano, the Imperial Equerry, and recounting with pleasant irony some magnifying of his office by that officer. Whence,

by an equally pleasant rhetorical turn, he slips into a defence of his office–his “unelected vocation” of poet. Were not the

earliest and greatest authors of all countries, Musæus, Homer, Hesiod, in Greece (not to mention Orpheus and Linus), Livius

Andronicus and Ennius among the Romans, Dante, Boccaccio, and Petrarch in Italy, Chaucer and Gower for “our English”—

were they not all poets? Even the philosophers in Greece used poetry, and Plato himself is a poet almost against his will.

Herodotus called his nine books after the Muses; and he and all historians have stolen or usurped things of poetry. Wales

Ireland, “the most barbarous and simple Indians,” are cited. Nay, further, did not the Romans call a poet vates, a “prophet”?

and, by presumption, may we not call David's psalms a divine poem? Whatever some may think,1 it is no profanation to do

so. For what is a poet? What do we mean by adopting that Greek title for him? We mean that he is a maker. All other

arts and sciences limit themselves to nature; the poet alone transcends nature, improves it, nay, brings himself (“let it not

be deemed too saucy a comparison”) in some sort into competition with the Creator Himself whom he imitates.

The kinds of this imitation are then surveyed—“Divine,” “Philosophical,” and that of the third or right sort, who only

imitate to invent and improve, which neither divine nor philosophic poets can do. These classes are subdivided according to

their matter–heroic, tragic, comic, &c.—or according to the sorts of verses they liked best to write in, “for, indeed, the

greatest part of poets have apparelled their poetical inventions in that numerous kind of writing which is called verse—indeed

but apparelled, verse being but an ornament and no cause to poetry.” And again, “it is not rhyming and versing that

1 Savonarola, probably.

56

ELIZABETHAN CRITICISM.

maketh a poet." Xenophon and Heliodorus were both poets

in prose.

Now let us "weigh this latter part of poetry first by works

and then by parts," having regard always to the "Architec-

tonice or mistress-knowledge," the knowledge of a man's self,

ethically and politically. Philosophy, history, law, &c., are

then "weighed" against poetry at some length : and the judg-

ment of Aristotle that Poetry is philosophoteron and spoudaioteron than history, is affirmed chiefly on the odd ground of

poetical justice,—the right always triumphing in poetry though

not in fact. Instances of the moral and political uses of poetry

follow. Then for the parts. Pastoral, comedy, tragedy, &c., are

by turns surveyed and defended ; and it is in the eulogy of

lyric that the famous sentence about Chevy Chase 1 occurs.

After this, and after a stately vindication of Poetry's right to

the laurel, he turns to the objections of the objectors. Although

repeating the declaration that "rhyming and versing make not

poetry," he argues that if they were inseparable,2 verse is the

most excellent kind of writing, far better than prose. As to

the abuses of poetry, they are but abuses, and do not take away

the use, as is proved by a great number of stock examples.

Why, then, has England grown so hard a stepmother to

poets ? They are bad enough as a rule, no doubt; though

Chaucer did excellently considering his time. The Mirror for

Magistrates is good ; so is Surrey ; and The Shepherd's Calendar

"hath much poetry," though "the old rustic language" is bad,

since neither Theocritus, nor Virgil, nor Sannazar has it. And

what is the reason of our inferiority ? The neglect of rule.

From this point onwards Sidney certainly "exposes his legs to

the arrows" of those who ignore the just historic estimate. He

pours ridicule on all our tragedies except Gorboduc, and still

more on our mongrel tragi-comedies. We must follow the

Unities, which, as it is, are neglected even in Gorboduc, "how

much more in all the rest ?" Whence he proceeds (uncon-

1 "I must confess my own barbar-

ousness : I never heard the old song of

Percy and Douglas that I found not

my heart moved more than with a

"As indeed it seemeth Scaliger

judgeth."

scioius how cool the reductio ad absurdum will leave us) to the

famous ridicule of "Asia on the one side and Africa on the

other," of "three ladies walking to gather flowers," and how the

same place which was a garden becomes a rock, and then a cave

with a monster, and then a battlefield with two armies-of the

course of two lives in two hours' space, &c. And he concludes

with some remarks on versification, which we should gladly

have seen worked out. For he does not now seem to be in that

antagonistic mood towards rhyme which Spenser's letters to

Harvey discover in him. On the contrary, he admits two

styles, ancient and modern, the former depending on quantity,

the latter depending on "number," accent, and rhyme. He

indeed thinks English fit for both sorts, and denies "neither

sweetness nor majesty" to rhyme, but is, like almost all his

contemporaries and followers (except Gascoigne partially), in a

fog as to "numbers" and cæsura. The actual end comes a very

little abruptly by an exhortation of some length, half humorous,

half serious, to all and sundry, to be "no more to jest at the

reverent title of a rhymer."

The importance of this manifesto, both symptomatically and

typically, can hardly be exaggerated. It exhibits the temper

Its minor of the generation which actually produced the first-

shortcomings fruits of the greatest Elizabethan poetry; it served

as a stimulant and encouragement to all the successive genera-

tions of the great age. That Sidney makes mistakes both in

gross and detail—that he even makes some rather serious mis-

takes from the mere "point of view of the examiner"—is of

course undeniable. He has a good deal of the merely tradi-

tional mode of Renaissance respect for classical—and for some

modern—authority. That, for instance, there is a good deal to

be said, and that not only from the point of view of Ben Jonson,

against Spenser's half-archaic half-rustic dialect in the Calendar,

few would refuse to grant. But Theocritus did use dialect: it

would not in the least matter whether either he or Virgil did

not; and if it did, what has the modern and purely vernacular

name of Sannazar to do with the matter? It can only be

replied that Spenser, by permitting "E. K.'s" annotation, did

much to invite this sort of criticism; and that Englishmen's re-

luctance to rely on the inherent powers of the English language

was partly justified (for hardly any dead poet but Chaucer and

no dead prose-writers but Malory and perhaps Berners deserved

the title of "great"), partly came from very pardonable ignorance.

It has been already observed that Sidney is by no means

peremptory about the "new versifying"; and in particular has

absolutely none of the craze against rhyme as rhyme which

animated persons of every degree of ability, from Stanyhurst to

Milton, during more than a century. His remarks on versifica-

tion are, however, too scanty to need much comment.

There remain his two major heresies, the declaration that

verse is not inseparable from poetry, and the denunciation of

and major tragi-comedy. In both the authority of the ancients

heresies. must again bear good part of the blame, but in both

he has additional excuses. As to the "pestilent heresy of prose

poetry," he is at least not unwilling to argue on the hypothesis

that verse were necessary to poetry, though he does not think it

is. He is quite sure that verse is anyhow a nobler medium

than prose. As for the plays, there is still more excuse for

him. His classical authorities were quite clear on the point;

and as yet there was nothing to be quoted on the other side-

at least in English. Spanish had indeed already made the

experiment of tragi-comic and anti-unitarian treatment; but I

do not think any of the best Spanish examples had yet appeared,

and there is great difference between the two theatres. In

English itself not one single great or even good play certainly

existed on the model at Sidney's death; and, from what we have

of what did exist, we cam judge how the rough verse, the clumsy

construction, or rather absence of construction, the entire ab-

sence of clear character-projection, and the higgledy-piggledy

of huddled horrors and horseplay, must have shocked a taste

delicate in itself and nursed upon classical and Italian litera-

The excuses ture. And it is noteworthy that even Gorboduc,

of both, with all its regularity and "Senecation," does not

bribe Sidney to overlook at least some of its defects. He is

here, as elsewhere,—as indeed throughout,—neither blind nor

bigoted. He is only in the position of a man very imperfectly

supplied with actual experiments and observations, confronted

with a stage of creative production but just improving from a

very bad state, and relying on old and approved methods as

against new ones which had as yet had no success.

And had his mistakes been thrice what they are, the tone

and temper of his tractate would make us forgive them three

times over. That "moving of his heart as with a

and their ample com- trumpet" communicates itself to his reader even

pensation. now, and shows us the motion in the heart of the

nation at large that was giving us the Faerie Queene, that was

to give us Hamlet and As You Like It. What though the

illustrations sometimes make us smile? that the praise of the

moral and political effects of poetry may sometimes turn the

smile into a laugh or a sigh? Poetry after all, like all other

human things, has a body and a soul. The body must be

fashioned by art—perhaps the body is art; but the soul is

something else. The best poetry will not come without careful

consideration of form and subject, of kind and style; but it will

not necessarily come with this consideration. There must be

the inspiration, the enthusiasm, the afflatus, the glow; and they

are here in Sidney's tractate. Nor must we fail to draw atten-

tion, once more, to the difference of the English critical spirit

here shown as regards both Italian and French.

In the decade which followed,1 three notable books of English

criticism appeared, none of them exhibiting Sidney's afflatus, but

King James's all showing the interest felt in the subject, and one

Reulis and exceeding in method, and at least attempted range,

Cautelis. anything that English had known, or was to know,

for more than a century. These were King James the First's

(as yet only "the Sixth's") Reulis and Cautelis to be observit

and eschewit in Scottis Poesie, 1585; William Webbe's Discourse

of English Poesie, next year; and the anonymous Arte of English

Poesie, which appeared in 1589, and which (on rather weak

evidence, but with no counter-claimant) is usually attributed to

George or to Richard Puttenham.

1 It may be desirable to note that Sidney's book, though very well known,

as was the wont then, in MS., to all who cared to know, was never printed

till 1595, nearly ten years after the author's death.

2 All three are included in Mr Arber's Reprints and Prof. Gregory Smith's

collection, with due biographical and bibliographical apparatus.

60

ELIZABETHAN CRITICISM.

The first is the slightest; but it is interesting for more than its authorship. It was attached to James's

Essays of a Prentice in the Divine Art, of which it gives some rules: it shows that Buchanan had taken

pains with his pupil; and it also exhibits that slightly scholastic and “peddling,” but by no means un-

real, shrewdness and acumen which distinguished the British Solomon in his happier moments. It is characteristic

that James is not in the least afraid of the charge of attending to mint, anise, and cumin. He plunges

without any rhetorical exordium into what he calls “just colours”—do not rhyme on the same syllable,

see that your rhyme is on accented syllables only, do not let your first or last word exceed two or three

syllables at most. This dread of polysyllables, so curious to us, was very common at the time: it was one of the things from

which Shakespeare's silent sovereignty delivered us by such touches of spell-dissolving mastery as

“The multitudinous seas incarnadine.”

Then he passes to feet, of which he practically allows only the iamb; while he very oddly gives the word “foot” to the syllable,

not the combination of syllables; and lays down the entirely arbitrary rule that the number of “feet”—i.e., syllables—must

be even, not odd. There is to be a sharp section (“cæsura”) in the middle of every line, long or short; and the difference of

long, short, and “indifferent” (common) feet or syllables is dwelt upon, with its influence of “flowing,” as the King calls rhythm.

Cautions on diction follow, and some against commonplaces, which look as if the royal prentice had read Gascoigne, a sugges-

tion confirmed elsewhere.1 Invention is briefly touched; and the tract finishes with a short account of the kinds of verse: “rhyme”

—i.e., the heroic couplet, “quhilk servis onely for lang historieis”; a heroical stanza of nine lines, rhymed aabaabbab; ottava rima,

which he calls “ballat royal”; rhyme royal, which he calls “Troilus verse”; “rouncifals,” or “tumbling verse” (doggerel

alliterative, with bob and wheel); sonnets; “common” verse (octosyllable couplets); “all kinds of broken or cuttit verse,” &c.

The tract is, as has been said, interesting, because it is an

1 It is, however, excessive to represent James as a mere copyist of Gascoigne.

honest, and by no means unintelligent, attempt to make an

English prosody, with special reference to a dialect which had

done great things in its short day, but which had been specially

affected—not to say specially disorganised—by the revived and

bastard alliteration of the fifteenth century. Probably it was

the study of French (where the iamb had long been the

only foot) which, quite as much as mere following of Gas-

coigne, induced James to extend that crippling limitation to

English; and the same influence may be seen in his insist-

ence on the hard-and-fast section. These things (the latter of

which at least rather endeared him to Dr Guest)1 are, of course,

quite wrong; but they express the genuine and creditable

desire of the time to impose some order on the shambling

doggerel of the generation or two immediately preceding. We

find the same tendency even in Spenser, as far as rigid dis-

syllabic feet and sections are concerned; and it is certainly

no shame for the Royal practice to follow, though unknow-

ing, the master and king of English poetry at the time when

he wrote.

One would not, however, in any case have expected from

James evidence of the root of the matter in poetry. There is

Webbe's more of this root, though less scholarship and also

Discourse. more "craze," in the obscure William Webbe, of

whom we know practically nothing except that he was a Cam-

bridge man, a friend of Robert Wilmot (the author of Tancred

and Gismund) and private tutor to the sons of Edward Sulyard

of Flemyngs, an Essex squire. The young Sulyards must have

received some rather dubious instruction in the classics, for

Webbe, in his inevitable classical exordium, thinks that Pindar

was older than Homer, and that Horace came after—apparently

a good while after—Ovid, and about the same time as Juvenal

and Persius. He was, however, really and deeply interested in

English verse; and his enthusiasm for Spenser—"the new

poet," "our late famous poet," "the mightiest English poet that

ever lived," is, if not in every case quite according to know-

ledge, absolutely right on the whole, and very pleasant and

1 Who also caught at James's stigmatisation for the true English

"tumbling verse" as a convenient equivalenced liberty.

refreshing to read. It is, indeed, the first thing of the kind

that we meet with in English ; for the frequent earlier praises

of Chaucer are almost always long after date, always uncritical,

and for the most part 1 much rather expressions of a conven-

tional tradition than of the writer's deliberate preference.

It was Webbe's misfortune, rather than his fault, that, like

his idol (but without that idol's resipiscence), and, like most

loyal Cambridge men, with the examples of Watson, Ascham,

and Drant before them, he was bitten with "the new versify-

ing." It was rather his fault than his misfortune that he seems

to have taken very little pains to acquaint himself with the

actual performance of English poetry. Even of Gower he

speaks as though he only knew him through the references of

Chaucer and others : though three editions of the Confessio—

Caxton's one and Berthelette's two—were in print in his time.

His notice of Chaucer himself is curiously vague, and almost

limited to his powers as a satirist; while he has, what must

seem to most judges,2 the astonishing idea of discovering "good

proportion of verse and meetly current style" in Lydgate,

though he reproves him for dealing with "superstitious and odd

matters." That he thinks Piers Plowman later than Lydgate

is unlucky, but not quite criminal. He had evidently read it

—indeed the book, from its kinship in parts to the Protestant,

and Crowley had already printed two editions of it, Rogers a

third. But he makes upon it the extraordinary remark, "The first

Slight in curiosity of rhyme." What Webbe here means by

knowledge, "quantity," or whether he had any clear deliberate

meaning at all, it is impossible to see: it is needless to say that

Langland is absolutely non-quantitative in the ordinary sense,

that if "quantity" means number of syllables he observes none,

1 Occleve—no genius, but a true

man enough—deserves exception per-

haps best.

2 Some Germans—in this, as in other

matters, more hopelessly to seek in Eng-

lish now than, teste Porson, they were a

century ago in Greek—have followed

Webbe, as indeed Warton had strangely

done ; and of course some Englishmen

have followed the Germans. Lydgate

himself knew better, though some of

the shorter poems attributed to him

are metrically, as well as in other ways,

not contemptible.

and that he can be scanned only on the alliterative-accentual

system. For Gascoigne Webbe relies on "E. K."; brackets

"the divers works of the old Earl of Surrey" with a dozen

others; is copious on Phaer, Golding, &c., and mentions

George Whetstone and Anthony Munday in words which

would be adequate for Sackville (who is not named), and

hardly too low for Spenser; while Gabriel Harvey is deliber-

ately ranked with Spenser himself. Yet these things, rightly

valued, are not great shame to Webbe. If he borrows from

"E. K." some scorn of the "ragged rout of rakehell rhymers,"

and adds more of his own, he specifies nobody; and his de-

preciation is only the defect which almost necessarily accom-

panies the quality of his enthusiasm.

His piece, though not long, is longer than those of Gas-

coigne, Sidnoy, and King James. After a dedication (not more

but enthusi- than excusably laudatory) to his patron Sulyard,

astic, there is a curious preface to "The Noble Poets of

England," who, if they had been inclined to be censorious,

might have replied that Master Webbe, while complimenting

them, went about to show that the objects of his compliment

did not exist. "It is," he says, "to be wondered of all, and is

lamented of many, that, while all other studies are used

eagerly, only Poetry has found fewest friends to amend it."

We have "as sharp and quick wits" in England as ever were

Greeks and Romans: our tongue is neither coarse nor harsh,

as she has already shown. All that is wanted is "some perfect

platform or Prosodia of versifying: either in imitation of

Greeks and Latins, or with necessary alterations. So, if the

Noble Poets would "look so low from their divine cogitations,

and "run over the simple censure" of Master Webbe's "weak

brain," something might, perhaps, be done.

The treatise itself begins with the usual etymological de-

finition of poetry, as "making," and the usual comments on

if uncritical, the word "Vates"; but almost immediately digresses

into praise of our late famous English poet who

wrote the Shepherd's Calendar and a wish to see his "English

Poet" (mentioned by "E. K."), which, alas! none of us have

ever seen. This is succeeded, first by the classical and then by

64

ELIZABETHAN CRITICISM.

the English historical sketches, which have been commented upon. It ends with fresh laudation of Spenser.

Webbe then turns to the general consideration of poetry (especially from the allegoric-didactic point of view), of subjects, kinds, &c.; and it is to be observed that, though he several times cites Aristotle, he leans much more on Horace, and on Elyot's translations from him and other Latins. He then proceeds to a rather unnecessarily elaborate study of the Æneid, with large citations both from the original and from Phaer's translation, after which he returns once more to Spenser, and holds him up as at least the equal of Virgil and Theocritus. Indeed the Calendar is practically his theme all through, though he diverges from and embroiders upon it. Then, after glancing amiably enough at Tusser, and mentioning a translation of his own of the Georgics, which has got into the hands of some piratical publisher, he attacks the great rhyme-question, to which he has, from the Preface onwards, more than once alluded. Much of what he says is borrowed, or a little advanced, from Ascham; but Webbe is less certain about the matter than his master, and again diverges into a consideration of divers English metres, always illustrated, where possible, from the Calendar. Still harking back again, he decides that "the true kind of versifying" might have been effected in English : though (as Campion, with better wits, did after him) he questions whether some alteration of the actual Greek and Latin forms is not required. He gives a list of classical feet (fairly correct, except that he makes the odd confusion of a trochee and a tribrach), and discusses the liberties which must be taken with English to adjust it to some of them. Elegiacs, he thinks, will not do: Hexameters and Sapphics go best. And, to prove this, he is rash enough to give versions of his own, in the former metre, of Virgil's first and second eclogues, in the latter, of Spenser's beautiful

"Ye dainty nymphs that in this blessed brook."

It is enough to say that he succeeds in stripping all three of every rag of poetry. A translation of Fabricius'1 "prose syllabuses2. V. Hist. Crit., ii. 354.

bus of Horace's rules, gathered not merely out of the Ep. ad

Pisones but elsewhere, and an "epilogue," modest as to

himself, sanguine as to what will happen when "the rabble

of bald rhymes is turned to famous works," concludes the

piece.

On the whole, to use the hackneyed old phrase once more,

we could have better spared a better critic than Webbe, who

in appreci-

ation. the early exploration of English criticism — the

workings of a mind furnished with no original genius for

poetry, and not much for literature, not very extensively or

accurately erudite, but intensely interested in matters literary,

and especially in matters poetical, generously enthusiastic for

such good things as were presented to it, not without some

mother-wit even in its crazes, and encouraged in those crazes

not, as in Harvey's case, by vanity, pedantry, and bad taste,

but by its very love of letters. Average dispositions of this

kind were, as a rule, diverted either into active life—very much

for the good of the nation—or—not at all for its good—into

the acrid disputes of hot-gospelling and Puritanism. Webbe,

to the best of his modest powers, was a devotee of literature:

for which let him have due honour.

Puttenham—or whosoever else it was, if it was not Put-

tenham 1—has some points of advantage, and one great one

of disadvantage, in comparison with Webbe. In

Putten-

ham's (?) Art of Eng-

lish Poesie. tween them—the abundant specimens of his own

powers, which the author of The Art of English

Poesie gives (and which are eked out by a late copy of one of

the works referred to, Partheniades), deserve the gibes they

receive in one of our scanty early notices of the book, that by

Sir John Harington (v. infra). On the other hand, Puttenham

has very little of that engaging enthusiasm which atones for

1 The whole of the documents in the case will be found, clearly put, in Arber

and Gregory Smith: also in Mr Herbert Croft's edition of The Governor

of Sir Thomas Elyot, the Puttenhams'

uncle. The first attribution is in

Bolton (v. infra) some fifteen years

later than the date of the book, and

not quite positive ("as the Fame is").

Whether it was George or whether it

was Richard, non liquet.

E

66

ELIZABETHAN CRITICISM.

so much in his contemporary. But this very want of enthu-

siasm somewhat prepares us for, though it need not necessarily

accompany, merits which we do not find in Webbe, considered

as a critic. The Art of English Poesy, which, as has been said,

appeared in 1589, three years later than Webbe's, but which,

from some allusions, may have been written, or at least begun,

before it, and which, from other allusions, must have been the

work of a man well advanced in middle life, is methodically

composed, very capable in range and plan, and supported with

a by no means contemptible erudition, and no inconsiderable

supply of judgment and common-sense. It was unfortunate

for Puttenham that he was just a little too old: that having

been—as from a fairly precise statement of his he must have

been—born cir. 1530-5, he belonged to the early and uncertain

generation of Elizabethan men of letters, the Googes and

Turbervilles, and Gascoignes, not to the generation of Sidney

and Spenser, much less to that of Shakespeare and Jonson.

But what he had he gave: and it is far from valueless.

The book is "to-deled" (as the author of the Ancrent Riwle

would say) into three books—"Of Poets and Poesie," "Of Pro-

Its erudition. portion," and "Of Ornament." It begins, as usual,

with observations on the words poet and maker,

references to the ancients, &c.; but this exordium, which is

fitly written in a plain but useful and agreeable style, is com-

mendably short. The writer lays it down, with reasons, that

there may be an Art of English as of Latin and Greek poetry;

but cannot refrain from the same sort of "writing at large" as to

poets being the first philosophers, &c., which we have so often

seen.1 Indeed we must lay our account with the almost

certain fact that all writers of this period had seen Sidney's

Defence at least in MS. or had heard of it. He comes closer to

business with his remarks on the irruption of rhyme into Greek

and Latin poetry; and shows a better knowledge of leonine and

other mediæval Latin verse, not merely than Webbe, but even

than Ascham. A very long section then deals with the

question—all-interesting to a man of the Renaissance—in what

1 Harington, a person of humour, this as well as other things in his fling

and a typical Englishman, perstringes at the Art.

reputation poets were with princes of old, and how they be

now contemptible (wherein Puttenham shows a rather re-

markable acquaintance with modern European literature), and

then turns to the subject or matter of poesy and the forms

thereof, handling the latter at great length, and with a fair

sprinkle of literary anecdote. At last he comes to English

poetry; and though, as we might expect, he does not go

behind the late fourteenth century, he shows rather more know-

ledge than Webbe and (not without slips here and elsewhere)

far more comparative judgment. It must, however, be admitted

that, engaging as is his description of Sir Walter Raleigh’s

“vein most lofty, insolent, and passionate,” he does not show

to advantage in the patronising glance in passing at “that other

gentleman who wrote the late Shepherd’s Calendar,” contrasted

with the description of the Queen our Sovereign lady, “whose

Muse easily surmounteth all the rest in any kind on which

it may please her Majesty to employ her pen.” But here the

allowance comes in: the stoutest Tory of later days can never

wholly share, though he may remotely comprehend, the curious

mixture of religious, romantic, patriotic, amatory, and interested

feelings with which the men of the sixteenth century wrote

about Gloriana.

The second book deals with Proportion, in which word

Puttenham includes almost everything belonging to Prosody

Systematic in its widest sense—staff, stanza, measure, metres,

arrangement and feet, “caesure,” rhyme, accent, cadence, situation

(by which he means the arrangement of the rhymes), and pro-

portion in figure. On most of these heads he speaks more

or less in accordance with his fellows (though he very notice-

ably abstains from extreme commendation or condemnation of

rhyme), save that, for the moment, he seems to neglect the

“new versifying.” It is, however, but for a moment. After

his chapters on “proportion” in figure (the fanciful egg, wheel,

lozenge, &c., which he himself argues for, and which were to

make critics of the Addisonian type half-angry and half-sad),

he deals with the subject.

About this “new versifying” he is evidently in two minds.

He had glanced at it before (and refers to the glance

68

ELIZABETHAN CRITICISM.

now) 1 as "a nice and scholastic curiosity." However, "for the

information of our young makers, and pleasure to those who

be delighted in novelty, and to the intent that we may not seem

by ignorance or oversight to omit," 2 he "will now deal with it."

Which he does at great length; and, at any rate sometimes,

with a clearer perception of the prosodic values than any other,

even Spenser, had yet shown. But he does not seem quite

at home in the matter, and glides off to a discussion of feet—

classical feet—in the usual rhymed English verse.

The third book is longer than the first and second put

together, and is evidently that in which the author himself

and ex-

took most pleasure. It is called "Of Ornament,"

uberant

but practically deals with the whole question of

indulgence

lexis or style, so that it is at least common to

in Figures.

Rhetoric and Poetics. In one respect, too, it belongs

more specially to the former, in that it contains the most

elaborate treatment of rhetorical figures to be found, up to its

time, in English literature. Full eighty pages are occupied

with the catalogue of these "Figures Auricular" wherein

Puttenham (sometimes rather badly served by his pen or his

printer) ransacks the Greek rhetoricians, and compiles a list

(with explanations and examples) of over one hundred and

twenty. It is preceded and followed by more general remarks,

of which some account must be given.

Beginning with an exordial defence of ornament in general,

Puttenham proceeds to argue that set speeches, as in Parlia-

ment, not merely may but ought to be couched in something

more than a conversational style. This added grace must be

given by (1) Language, (2) Style, (3) Figures. On diction he

has remarks both shrewd and interesting, strongly commending

the language of the Court and of the best citizens, not pro-

1 Here as elsewhere we may note

evidences of possible revision in the

book. That there was some such re-

vision is certain; for instance, Ben

Jonson's copy (the existence of which

is not uninteresting) contains a large

cancel of four leaves, not found in

other copies known. For this and

other points of the same kind, see the

editions cited.

2 "Reviewing" was as yet in its

infancy—a curiously lively one though,

with Nash and others coming on.

Puttenham seems to have understood

its little ways rather well.

vincial speech, or that of seaports, or of universities, or in other ways merely technical. "The usual speech of the court, and

that of London and the shires lying about London, within ten miles and not much above" is his norm. There is also a

noteworthy and very early reference to English dictionaries, and a cautious section on neologisms introduced from other

tongues to fill wants. Style he will have reached by "a constant and continual tenor of writing," and gives the usual

subdivision of high, low, and middle. And so to his Figures. The details and illustrations of the long catalogue of these

invite comment, but we must abstain therefrom. When the list is finished, Puttenham returns to his generalities with a dis-

cussion of the main principle of ornament, which he calls Decorum or "Decency," dividing and illustrating the kinds of it into choice

of subject, diction, delivery, and other things, not without good craftsmanship, and with a profusion of anecdotes chiefly of the

Helotry kind. He then (rather oddly, but not out of keeping with his classical models) has a chapter of decorum in behaviour,

turns to the necessity of concealing art, and ends with a highly flattering conclusion to the Queen.

We have yet to mention some minorities; less briefly, the two champions-Campion and Daniel, who brought the question

of "Rhyme v. 'Verse'" to final arbitrament of battle; the great name (not so great here as elsewhere) of Francis Bacon; and

lastly, Ben Jonson, who, if he long survived Elizabeth, is far the greatest of Elizabethan critics, and perhaps the only English

critic who deserves the adjective "great" before Dryden.

The earliest (1591) of these is Sir John Harington, in the Minors: prefatory matter1 of his translation of the Orlando.

Harington, which contains the gibe at Puttenham above referred to. It is otherwise much indebted to Sidney,

Meres, Webster, Bolton, &c. from whom, however, Harington differs in allowing

more scope to allegorical interpretation. Then comes Francis

1 Reprinted by Haslewood. Whetstone's Preface to Promos and Cassandra (1578) and A. Fraunce's Arcadian Rhetoric (1588) are earlier still. The

latter is a strong partisan of classical metres, his practice in which is sufficiently roughly treated by Ben

former anticipates Sidney in objecting to the irregularity of English plays: Jonson in his Conversations, v. infra,

p. 82.

70

ELIZABETHAN CRITICISM.

Meres, whose Palladis Tamia1 (1598) is to be eternally mentioned with gratitude, because it gives us our one real document about the order of Shakespeare’s plays, but is quite childish in the critical characterisation which it not uninterstingingly attempts.

Webster’s equally famous, and universally known, epitheting of the work of Shakespeare and others in the Preface to The White Devil (1612) adds yet another instance of the short sight of contemporaries ; but tempting as it may be to comment on these, it would not become a Historian of Criticism to do so in this context.

William Vaughan in The Golden Grove (1600) had earlier dealt, and Bolton2 in his Hypercritica (1616), and Peacham in his Complete Gentleman (1622), were later to deal, with Poetry, but in terms adding nothing to, and probably borrowed from, the utterances of Sidney, Webbe, and Puttenham.

Their contributions are “sma’ sums,” as Bailie Nicol Jarvie says, and we must neglect them.

The most interesting literary result of the “new versifying” craze is to be found, without doubt, in the Observations in the Art of English Poesy of Thomas Campion3 and his subsequent Defence of Rhyme of Samuel Daniel.

Campion and his Observations.

The former was issued in 1602, and the latter still later ; —that is to say more than twenty years after Spenser’s and Harvey’s letters, and more than thirty after the appearance—let alone the writing—of Ascham’s Schoolmaster.

In the interval the true system of English prosody had put itself practically beyond all real danger; but the critical craze had never received its quietus.

Nay, it survived to animate Milton: and there are persons whom we could only name for the sake of honour, who would not appear to see that it is dead even yet.

Both the writers mentioned were true poets: and

1 Reprinted (in its critical section) by Mr Arber, English Garner, ii. 94 sq., and in Gregory Smith.

2 Bolton’s criticism of his contemporaries is extracted in Warton (iv. 204 sq., ed. Hazlitt). The writer, who is dealing with History, and speaking directly of language, disallows most of Spenser (excepting the Hymns) and all Chaucer, Lydgate, Langland, and Skelton, can “endure” Gascoigne, praises Elizabeth and James (of course), Chapman, Daniel, Drayton, Constable, Southwell, Sackville, Surrey, Wyatt, Raleigh, Donne, and Greville, but gives the palm for “vital, judicious, and practicable” language to Jonson.

3 Ed. Bullen, Works of Campion, London, 1889, and in Gregory Smith.

CAMPION.

the curious thing is that the more exquisitely romantic poet of

the two was the partisan of classical prosody. But Campion—

who dedicated his book to Lord Buckhurst, the doyen (except

poor old Churchyard) of English poetry at the time, and one

whose few but noble exercises in it need hardly vail their crest

to any contemporary poetry but Spenser's and Shakespeare's

—was far too wise a man, as well as far too good a poet, to

champion any longer the break-neck and break-jaw hexameters

of Harvey and Stanyhurst. We have seen that, almost from

the first, there had been questions of heart among the partisans

of the New Versifying. That English is not tolerant of dactyls

—that dactyls, do what you will, in English, will tilt themselves

up into anapæsts with anacrusis—is a truth which no impartial

student of metre with an ear, and with an eye to cover the

history of English poetry, can deny. Some even of these

pioneers had seen this: Campion has the boldness to declare it

in the words, “It [the dactylic hexameter] is an attempt alto-

gether against the nature of our language.” But though he was

bold so far, he was not quite bold enough. He could not sur-

mount the queer Renaissance objection to rhyme. That all the

arguments against the “barbarism” of this tell equally against

Christianity, chivalry, the English constitution, the existence

of America, gunpowder, glass-windows, coal-fires, and a very

large number of other institutions of some usefulness, never

seems to have occurred to any of these good folk. But no man

can escape his time. Campion, not noticing, or not choosing

to notice, the intensely English quality of the anapæst, limits,

or almost limits, our verse to iambs and trochees. It was pos-

sible for him—though it still appears to be difficult for some—

to recognise the tribrach, the mere suggestion of which in Eng-

lish verse threw Dr Guest into a paroxysm of “! ! ! !'s,” but

which exists as certainly as does the iamb itself. On the con-

trary he shows himself in advance of Guest, and of most be-

hind Guest to his own time, by admitting tribrachs in the third

and fifth places. Nay, he even sees that a trochee may take

the place of an iamb (Milton's probably borrowed secret) in

the first place, though his unerring ear (I think there is no

verse of Campion's that is unmusical) insists on some other foot

than an iamb following — otherwise, he says, “it would too

much drink up the verse.” But, on the whole, he sets himself

to work, a self-condemned drudge, to make iambic and trochaic

verses without rhyme. And on these two, with certain licences,

he arranges schemes of English elegiacs, anacreontics, and the

rest. Some of the examples of these are charming poems, notably

the famous “Rose-Cheeked Laura,” and the beautiful “Constant

to None,” while Campion’s subsequent remark on English

quantity are among the acutest on the subject. But the whole

thing has on it the curse of “flying in the face of nature.” You

have only to take one of Campion’s own poems (written mostly

after the Observations) in natural rhyme, and the difference will

be seen at once. It simply comes to this—that the good rhyme-

less poems would be infinitely better with rhyme, and that the

bad ones, while they might sometimes be absolutely saved by

the despised invention of Huns and Vandals, are always made

worse by its absence.

In the preface of Daniel’s answering Defence of Rhyme to

all the worthy lovers and learned professors [thereof] within

Daniel and His Majesty’s dominions,1 he says that he wrote

his Defence it “about a year since,” upon the “great reproach”

of Rhyme. given by Campion, and some give it the date of

1603 or even 1602; but Dr Grosart’s reprint is dated five

years later. The learned gentleman to whom it was specially

written was no less a person than William Herbert, Earl of

Pembroke, whom some of us (acknowledging that the matter is

no matter) do not yet give up as “Mr W. H.” The advocate

affects, with fair rhetorical excuse (though of course he must have

known that the craze was nearly half a century old, and had at

least not been discouraged by his patron’s uncle nearly a genera-

tion before), to regard the attack on rhyming as something new,

as merely concerned with the “measures” of Campion. Daniel,

always a gentleman, deals handsomely with his antagonist,

whom he does not name, but describes as “this detractor whose

commendable rhymes, albeit now an enemy to rhyme, have given

heretofore to the world the best notice of his worth,” and

as a man “of fair parts and good reputation.” And having put

1 In Chalmers’s Poets, Grosart’s Works of Samuel Daniel, and Gregory Smith.

himself on the best ground, in this way, from the point of view

of morals and courtesy, he does the same in matter of argument

by refusing to attack Campion's " numbers " in themselves (" We

could," he says, " well have allowed of his numbers, had he not

disgraced our rhymes "); and by seizing the unassailable position

given by custom and nature—" Custom that is before all law ;

Nature that is above all art." In fact, not Jonson himself, and

certainly none else before Jonson, has comprehended, or at least

put, the truth of the matter as Daniel puts it, that arbitrary

laws imposed on the poetry of any nation are absurd—that the

verse of a language is such as best consorts with the nature of

that language. This seems a truism enough perhaps; but it

may be very much doubted whether all critics recognise it, and

its consequences, even at the present day. And it is certain

that we may search other early English critics in vain for a

frank recognition of it. With an equally bold and sure foot he

strides over the silly stuff about " invention of barbarous ages "

and the like. Whatever its origin (and about this he shows a

wise carelessnessness), it is " an excellence added to this work of

measure and harmony, far happier than any proportion quantity

could ever show." It " gives to the ear an echo of a delightful

report," and to the memory " a deeper impression of what is

delivered." He is less original (as well as, some may think, less

happy) in distinguishing the accent of English from the quantity

of the classical tongues; but the classicisers before Campion, if

not Campion himself, had made such a mess of quantity, and

had played such havoc with accent, that he may well be

excused. The universality of rhyme is urged, and once more

says Daniel (with that happy audacity in the contemning of

vain things which belongs to the born exploders of crazes),

" If the barbarian likes it, it is because it sways the affections of

the barbarian ; if civil nations practise it, it works upon their

hearts ; if all, then it has a power in nature upon all." But it

will be said, " Ill customs are to be left." No doubt: but the

question is begged. Who made this custom " ill "? Rhyme

aims at pleasing—and it pleases. Suffer then the world to enjoy

that which it knows and what it likes, for all the tyrannical

rules of rhetoric cannot make it otherwise. Why are we to be

a mere servum pecus, only to imitate the Greeks and Latins?

Their way was natural to them: let ours be so to us. "Why

should laboursome curiosity still lay affliction on our best

delights ?" Moreover, "to a spirit whom nature hath fitted

for that mystery," rhyme is no impediment, "but rather giveth

wings to mount." The necessary historical survey follows, with

a surprising and very welcome justification of the Middle Ages

against both Classics and Renaissance. "Let us," says this true

Daniel come to judgment, "go not further, but look upon the

wonderful architecture of the State of England, and see whether

they were unlearned times that could give it such a form ?"

And if politically, why not poetically? Some acute and, in the

other sense, rather sharp criticism of Campion's details follows,

with a few apologetic remarks for mixture of masculine and

feminine rhymes on his own part: and the whole concludes in

an admirable peroration with a great end-note to it. Not easily

shall we find, either in Elizabethan times or in any other, a

happier combination of solid good sense with eager poetic senti-

ment, of sound scholarship with wide-glancing intelligence, than

in this little tractate of some thirty or forty ordinary pages,

which dispelled the delusions of two generations, and made the

poetical fortune of England sure.

The contributions of "large-browed Verulam" to criticism

have sometimes been spoken of with reverence: and it is not un-

Bacon. common to find, amid the scanty classics of the subject,

which until recently have been recommended to the

notice of inquirers, not merely a place, but a place of very high

honour, assigned to The Advancement of Learning. Actual,

unprejudiced, and to some extent expert, reference to the works,

however, will not find very much to justify this estimate: and,

indeed, a little thought, assisted by very moderate knowledge,

would suffice to make it rather surprising that Bacon should give

us so much, than disappointing that he should give us little or

nothing. A producer of literature who at his best has few

superiors, and a user of it for purposes of quotation, who would

deserve the name of genius for this use alone if he had no other

title thereto—Bacon was yet by no means inclined by his main

interests and objects, or by his temperament, either towards

great exaltation of letters, or towards accurate and painstaking examination of them. Indeed, it is in him—almost first of all men, certainly first of all great modern men—that we find that partisan opposition between literature and science which has constantly developed since. It is true that his favourite method of examination into “forms” might seem tempting as applied to literature; and that it would, incidentally if not directly, have yielded more solid results than his Will-o’-the-wisp chase of the Form of Heat. But this very craze of his may suggest that if he had undertaken literary criticism it would have been on the old road of Kinds and Figures and Qualities, in which we could expect little but glowing rhetorical generalisation from him.

Nor is the nature of such small critical matter as we actually have from him very different. The Essays practically give us nothing but the contents of that Of Studies, a piece too well known to need quotation; too much in the early pregnant style of the author to bear compression or analysis; and too general to repay it. For the critic and the man of letters generally it is, in its own phrase, to be not merely tasted, nor even swallowed, but chewed and digested; yet its teachings have nothing more to do with the critical function of “study” than with all others.

The Advancement1 at least excuses the greatness thrust upon it in the estimates above referred to, not merely by the apparent necessity that the author should deal with Criticism, but by a certain appearance of his Learning. First Book he tackles the attention to style which sprang up at the Renaissance, opening his discussion by the ingenious but slightly unhistorical attribution of it to Martin Luther, who was forced to awake all antiquity, and call former times to his succour, against the Bishop of Rome. Not a few names, for the best part of two centuries before the great cause of Martinus v.

1 It ought to be, but from certain signs perhaps is not, unnecessary to say that the De Augmentis is itself no mere Latin version of the Advancement, but a large expansion of it. There seems, however, no necessity here to deal with both.

76

ELIZABETHAN CRITICISM.

Papam was launched, from Petrarch and Boccaccio to Erasmus and Reuchlin, will put in evidence before the tribunal of chronology against this singular assertion; and though the Italian Humanists of the fifteenth century might not (at least in thought) care anything for the Pope except as a source of donatives and benefices, it is certain that most of them were as constitutionally disinclined to abet Luther as they were chronologically disabled from in any way abetting him. Bacon's argument and further survey are, however, better than this beginning. To understand the ancients (he says justly enough) it was necessary to make a careful study of their language. Further, the opposition of thought to the Schoolmen naturally brought about a recoil from the barbarisms of Scholastic style, and the anxiety to win over the general imprinted care and elegance and vigour on preaching and writing. All this, he adds as justly, turned to excess. Men began to "hunt more after words than matter; Its denunciation of mere more after the choiceness of the phrase and the word-study. round and clean composition of the sentence, and the sweet falling of the clauses, and the varying and illustration of their words with tropes and figures, than after the weight of matter, worth of subject, soundness of argument, life of invention, or depth of judgment." The Ciceronianism of Osorius, Sturm, " Car of Cambridge," and even Ascham, receives more or less condemnation; and Erasmus is, of course, cited for gibes at it. On this text Bacon proceeds to enlarge in his own stately rhetoric, coolly admitting that it "is a thing not hastily to be condemned, to clothe and adorn the obscurity even of philosophy itself with sensible and plausible elocution." But he very quickly glides off into his usual denunciations of the schoolmen. Nor have I found anything else in this First Book really germane to our purpose; for one cannot cite as such the desultory observations on patronage of literature (among other branches of learning) which fill a good part of it.

The Second Book is somewhat more fruitful in quantity, if not very much; but the quality remains not very different. The opening "Address to the King" contains, in an interesting first draft (as we may call it), the everlasting grumble of the

scientific man, that science is not sufficiently endowed, the

further grumble at mere book-learning, the cry for the pro-

motion—by putting money in its purse—of research. The

Second and Third Chapters contain some plans of books drawn

up in Bacon’s warm imaginative way, especially a great series of

Histories, with the History of England for their centre. And

then we come, in the Fourth Chapter, to Poesy.

But except for Bacon’s majestic style (which, however, by

accident or intention, is rather below itself here) there is

Its view of absolutely nothing novel. The view (which, as we

Poetry. have seen, all the Elizabethan critics adopted, prob-

ably from the Italians)—the view is that poetry is just a part of

learning licensed in imagination ; a fanciful history intended to

give satisfaction to the mind of man in things where history is

not; something particularly prevalent and useful in barbarous

ages ; divisible into narrative, representative and allusive ;

useful now and then, but (as Aristotle would say) not a thing

to take very seriously. Yet poetry, a vinum dæmonum at the

worst, a mere illusion anyhow, is still, even as such, a refuge

from, and remedy for, sorrow and toil. Of its form, as dis-

tinguished from its matter, he says,1 “ Poetry is but a character

of style, and belongeth to arts of speech, and is not pertinent

for the present.” He attempts no defence of it as of other

parts of learning, because “ being as a plant that cometh of the

lust of the earth without a formal seed, it hath sprung up and

spread abroad more than any other kind.” And he turns from

it to philosophy, with the more than half-disdainful adieu, “ It

is not good to stay too long in the theatre.”

We might almost quit him here with a somewhat similar

leave-taking; but for his great reputation some other places

Some obiter shall be handled. At XIV. 11 there are some

dicta. remarks on the delusive powers of words; at XVI.

4, 5 some on grammar and rhetoric, including a rather interest-

ing observation, not sufficiently expanded or worked out, that

“ in modern languages it seemeth to me as free to make new

measures of verses as of dances ”; in XVIII. a handling of

strictly oratorical rhetoric, with a digression to these “ Colours

1 Advancement of Learning, Bk. II. iv.

of Good and Evil " which interested Bacon so much; in XX. another descant on the same art; in XXI. a puff of the Basilikon Doron ; in XXXII. observations on the moral influence of books; in XXXV. some general observations on literature; and, just before the close, a well-known and often-quoted eulogy, certainly not undeserved, of the eloquence of the English pulpit for forty years past.

If it were not for the singular want of a clear conception of literary Criticism, which has prevailed so long and so widely, The whole of it would hardly be necessary to take, with any very slight seriousness at all, a man who has no more than this importance. to say on the subject.1 It is most assuredly no slight to Bacon to deny him a place in a regiment where he never had the least ambition to serve.

That he was himself a great practitioner of literature, and so, necessarily if indirectly, a critic of it in his own case, is perfectly true; the remarks which have been quoted above on the Ciceronians show that, when he took the trouble, and found the opportunity, he could make them justly and soundly.

But his purpose, his interests, his province, his vein, lay far elsewhere. To him, it is pretty clear, literary expression was, in relation to his favourite studies and dreams, but a higher kind of pen-and-ink or printing -press.

He distrusted the stability of modern languages, and feared that studies couched in them might some day or other come to be unintelligible and lost to the world.

This famous fear explains the nature and the limits of his interest in literature. It was a vehicle or a treasury, a distributing agent or a guard. Its functions and qualities accorded: it was to be clear, not disagreeable, solidly constructed, intelligible to as large a number of readers as possible.

The psychological character and morphological def-

1 Those who wish to see what has been said for Bacon will find references in Gayley and Scott. The panegyrists -from Professor Masson to Mr Wors-fold-chiefly rely on the description of poetry above referred to, as "Feigned History," with what follows on its advantages and on poetical justice, &c.

All this seems to me, however admirably expressed, to be very obvious and rudimentary. Recently Mr Spingarn, in Cambridge History of Eng. Lit., vol. vii., has claimed for Bacon an appreciation of literary history which I also cannot fully grant.

inition of poetry interested him philosophically. But in the

art and the beauty of poetry and literature generally, for their

own sakes, he seems to have taken no more interest than he

did in the coloured pattern-plots in gardens, which he com-

pared to “tarts.” To a man so minded, as to those more

ancient ones of similar mind whom we have discussed in the

first volume, Criticism proper could, at the best, be a pastime

to be half ashamed of—a “theatre” in which to while away the

hours ; it could not possibly be a matter of serious as well as

enthusiastic study.

Between Bacon and Ben may be best noticed the short

Anacrisis or Censure of Poets, Ancient and Modern,1 by Sir

Stirling’s William Alexander, Earl of Stirling. It has re-

ceived high praise;2 but even those who think by

no means ill of Aurora, may find some difficulty in indorsing

this. It is simply a sort of “Note,” written, as the author

says, to record his impressions during a reading of the poets,

which he had undertaken as refreshment after great travail

both of body and mind. He thinks Language “but the apparel

of poesy,” thereby going even further than those who would

assign that position to verse, and suggesting a system of

“Inarticulate Poetics,” which he would have been rather put

to it to body forth. He only means, however, that he judges

in the orthodox Aristotelian way, by “the fable and contex-

ture.” A subsequent comparison of a poem to a garden sug-

gests the French critic Vauquelin de la Fresnaye, whom he may

have read. Alexander is a sort of general lover in poetry; he

likes this in Virgil, that in Ovid, that other in Horace ; defends

Lucan against Scaliger, even to the point of blaming the con-

clusion of the Æneid; finds “no man that doth satisfy him

more than the notable Italian, Torquato Tasso”; admits the

1 To be most readily found in Rogers’s

Memorials of the Earl of Stirling (vol.

ii. pp. 205-210 ; Edinburgh, 1877),

where, however, it appears merely as

one of the Appendices to a book of

more or less pure genealogy, without

the slightest editorial information as to

date or provenance. It seems to be

taken from the 1711 folio of Drum-

mond’s Works ; and to have been

written in 1634, between Bacon’s death

and Ben’s. (It has since been given in

Mr O. Smeaton’s Scots Essayists.)

2 From Park, and from Messrs

Gayley and Scott. I did not always

agree with my late friend Dr Grosart ;

but I think he was better advised when

he called it “disappointing.”

80

ELIZABETHAN CRITICISM.

historical as well as the fictitious poetic subject; but thinks

that "the treasures of poetry cannot be better bestowed than

upon the apparelling of Truth; and Truth cannot be better

apparelled to please young lovers than with the excellences

of poetry." Disrespectful language neither need nor should

be used of so slight a thing, which is, and pretends to be,

nothing more than a sort of table-book entry by a gentleman

of learning as well as quality. But, if it has any "importance"

at all, it is surely that of being yet another proof of the rapid

diffusion of critical taste and practice, not of stating "theory

and methods considerably in advance of the age." If we could

take extensively his protest against those who "would bound

the boundless liberty of the poet," such language might indeed

be justified; but the context strictly limits it to the very

minor, though then, and for long before and after, commonly

debated, question of Fiction v. History in subject.

Save perhaps in one single respect (where the defect was not

wholly his fault), Ben Jonson might be described as a critic

Ben Jonson: armed at all points. His knowledge of literature

his equip- was extremely wide, being at the same time solid

ment. and thorough. While he had an understanding

above all things strong and masculine, he was particularly

addicted, though in no dilettante fashion, to points of form.

His whole energies, and they were little short of Titanic, were

given to literature. And, lastly, if he had not the supremest

poetic genius, he had such a talent that only the neighbour-

hood of supremacy dwarfs it. Where he came short was not

in a certain hardness of temper and scholasticism of attitude:

for these, if kept within bounds, and tempered by that enthu-

siasm for letters which he possessed, are not bad equipments

for the critic. It was rather in the fact that he still came too

early for it to be possible for him, except by the help of a

miracle, to understand the achievements and value of the

vernaculars. By his latest days, indeed,1 the positive per-

1 These days carried him far beyond the 16th century. His solidarity with

the Elizabethans proper, however, makes his inclusion here imperative.

It may be added that since this book

was first written, the classical strain

of the Discoveries has been indicated with much learning, but with excessive

stress of unfavourable reference, by a French critic, M. Castellain.

formance of these was already very great. Spain has hardly

added anything since, and Italy not very much, to her share

of European literature; France was already in the first flush

of her "classical" period, after a long and glorious earlier

history: and what Ben's own contemporaries in England had

done, all men know. But mediæval literature was shut from

him, as from all, till far later; he does not seem to have been

much drawn to Continental letters, and, perhaps in their case,

as certainly in English, he was too near—too much a part of

the movement—to get it into firm perspective.

In a sense the critical temper in Jonson is all-pervading. It

breaks out side by side with, and sometimes even within, his

His sweetest lyrics; it interposes what may be called

Prefaces, parabases in the most unexpected passages 1 of his

dramatised as The Frogs. But there are three "places," or

groups of places, which it inspires, not in mere suggestion, but

with propriety—the occasional Prefaces, or observations, to and

on the plays themselves, the Conversations with Drummond, and,

above all, the at last fairly (though not yet sufficiently) known

Discoveries or Timber.

To piece together, with any elaboration, the more scattered

critical passages would be fitter for a monograph on Jonson

than for a History of Criticism. The "Address to the Readers"

of Sejanus, which contains a reference to the author's lost Obser-

vations on Horace, his Art of Poetry (not the least of such

1 Take this interesting passage in

In which there is no torrent, nor scarco

the masque of The New World Dis-

stream."

covered in the Moon—

On this Gifford discovered in Theo-

Chro. Is he a man's poet or a woman's

bald's copy of the note: "Woman's Poet,

poet, I pray you?

his soft versification—Mr P—.""""

2nd Her. Is there any such difference?

The Induction to Every Man out of

Fact. Many, as betwixt your man's tailor

His Humour, a very large part of

and your woman's tailor.

Cynthia's Revels, not a little of The

1st Her. How, may we beseech you?

Silent Woman, and scores of other

Fact. I'll show you : your man's poet may

places, might be added. (Since this

break out strong and deep i' the mouth, . . .

was written Dr David Klein has made

but your woman's poet must flow, and stroke

a good collection, Literary Criticism

the ear, and as one of them said of himself

from the Elizabethan Dramatists (New

sweetly—

"Must write a verse as smooth and calm as

York, 1910), including Ben and draw-

cream,

ing on others.)

F

82

ELIZABETHAN CRITICISM.

losses) is a fair specimen of them: the dedication of Volpone to "the most noble and most equal sisters, Oxford and Cam-

bridge," a better. In both, and in numerous other passages of prose and verse, we find the real and solid, though somewhat

partial, knowledge, the strong sense, the methodic scholarship of Ben, side by side with his stately, not Euphuistic, but

rather too close-packed style, his not ill-founded, but slightly excessive, self-confidence, and that rough knock-down manner

of assertion and characterisation which reappeared in its most unguarded form in the Conversations with Drummond.

The critical utterances of these Conversations are far too interesting to be passed over here, though we cannot discuss

The Drum- them in full. They tell us that Ben thought all mond Con- (other) rhymes inferior to couplets, and had written

versations. a treatise (which, again, would we had!) against both Campion and Daniel (see ante). His objection to "stanzas and

cross rhymes" was that "as the purpose might lead beyond them, they were all forced." Sidney "made every one speak as well as

himself," and so did not keep "decorum" (cf. Puttenham above). Spenser's stanzas and language did not please him. Daniel

was no poet. He did not like Drayton's "long verses," nor Sylvester's and Fairfax's translations. He thought the translations

of Homer (Chapman's) and Virgil (Phaer's) into "long Alexandrines" (i.e., fourteeners) were but prose: yet elsewhere we hear

that he "had some of Chapman by heart." Harington's Ariosto was the worst of all translations. Donne was sometimes

"profane," and "for not keeping of accent deserved hanging"; but elsewhere he was "the first poet of the world in some

things," though, "though not being understood, he would perish."1 Shakespeare "wanted art": and "Abram Francis

(Abraham Fraunce) in his English Hexameters was a fool." "Bartas was not a poet, but a verser, because he wrote not

fiction." He cursed Petrarch for reducing verses to sonnets, "which were like Procrustes' bed." Guarini incurred the

1 These dicta, thus juxtaposed, should make all argument about apparently one-sided judgments super-

fluous. If Drummond had omitted almost any single one, we should have been utterly wrong in arguing from

the remainder.

same blame as Sir Philip: and Lucan was good in parts only.

"The best pieces of Ronsard were his Odes."

Drummond's own verses "were all good, but smelled too much of the

schools." The "silver" Latins, as we should expect, pleased

him best. "To have written Southwell's 'Burning Babe,' he

would have been content to destroy many of his."

These are the chief really critical items, though there are

others (putting personal gossip aside) of interest; but it may be

added, as a curiosity, that he told Drummond that he himself

"writ all first in prose" at Camden's suggestion, and held that

"verses stood all by sense, without colours or accent" (poetic

diction or metre), "which yet at other times he denied," says

the reporter, a sentence ever to be remembered in connection

with these jottings. Remembering it, there is nothing shocking

in any of these observations, nor anything really inconsistent.

A true critic never holds the neat, positive, "reduced-to-its-

lowest-terms" estimate of authors, in which a criticaster de-

lights. His view is always facetted, conditioned. But he may,

in a friendly chat, or a conversation for victory, exaggerate this

facet or condition, while altogether suppressing others; and

this clearly is what Ben did.

For gloss on the Conversations, for reduction to something

like system of the critical remarks scattered through the works,

and for the nearest approach we can have to a formal present-

ment of Ben's critical views, we must go to the Discoveries.1

The fact that we find no less than four titles for the book—

Timber, Explorata, Discoveries, and Sylva — with others of its

The peculiarities, is explained by the second fact that

Jonson never published it. It never appeared in

print till the folio of 1641, years after its author's death. The

Discoveries are described as being made "upon men and matter

as they have flowed out of his daily reading, or had their reflux

to his peculiar notions of the times." They are, in fact, notes

1 The best separate edition is that of Prof. Schelling of Philadelphia (Bos-

ton, U.S.A., 1892). I give the pp. of this, as well as the Latin Headings of

sections, which will enable any one to

trace the passage in complete editions of the Works such as Cunningham's

Giford. It is strange that no one has numbered these sections for con-

venience of reference.

84

ELIZABETHAN CRITICISM.

unnumbered and unclassified (though batches of more or fewer sometimes run on the same subject), each with its Latin heading, and varying in length from a few lines to that of his friend (and partly master) Bacon's shorter Essays. The influence of those "silver" Latins whom he loved so much is prominent. Large passages are simply translated from Quintilian, and for some time 1 the tenor is ethical rather than literary. A note on Perspicuitas—elegantia (p. 7) breaks these, but has nothing noteworthy about it, and Bellum scribentium (p. 10) is only a satiric exclamation on the folly of "writers committed together by the ears for ceremonies, syllables, points," &c. The longer Nil gratius protervo libro (pp. 11, 12) seems a retort for some personal injury, combined with the old complaint of the decadence and degradation of poetry.2 There is just but rather general stricture in Eloquentia (p. 16) on the difference between the arguments of the study and of the world. "I would no more choose a rhetorician for reigning in a school," says Ben, "than I would choose a pilot for rowing in a pond."3 Memoria (p. 18) includes a gird at Euphuism. At last we come to business. Censura de poetis (p. 21), introduced by a fresh fling at Euphuism, in De vere argutis, opens with a tolerably confident note, "Nothing in our age is more preposterous than the running judgments upon poetry and poets," with much more to the same effect, the whole being pointed by the fling, "If it were a question of the water-rhymer's4 works against Spenser's, I doubt not but they would find more suffrages." The famous passage on Shakespeare follows: and the development of Ben's view, "would he had blotted a thousand," leads to a more general disquisition on the differences of wits, which includes the sentence already referred to. "Such [i.e., haphazard and inconsistent] are all the Essayists, even their master Montaigne.

1 It may be observed that the shorter aphorisms rise to the top—at least the beginning.

2 "He is upbraidingly called a poet. . . . The professors, indeed, have made the learning cheap."

3 It is here that Ben borrows from Petronius not merely the sentiment but

the phrase, "umbratical doctor" (see Hist. Crit., i. 244 note).

4 "Taylor the Water-Poet," certainly bad enough as a poet—though not as a man. But the selection of Spenser as the other pole is an invaluable correction to the sweeping attack in the Conversations.

taigne." The notes now keep close to literature throughout in

substance, though their titles (e.g., Ignorantia animæ), and so

forth, may seem wider. A heading, De Claris Oratoribus (p.

26), leads to yet another of the purple passages of the book

—that on Bacon, in which is intercalated a curious Scriptorum

catalogus, limited, for the most part, though Surrey and Wyatt

are mentioned, to prose writers. And then for some time ethicks,

politics, and other subjects, again have Ben's chief attention.1

We return to literature, after some interval (but with a

parenthetic glance at the poesis et pictura notion at p. 49),

on p. 52, in a curious unheaded letter to an unnamed

Lordship on Education, much of which is translated directly

from Ben Jonson's favourite Quintilian; and then directly

accost it again with a tractatule De stilo et optimo scribendi

genere, p. 54, hardly parting company thereafter. Ben's pre-

scription is threefold: read the best authors, observe the best

speakers, and exercise your own style much. But he is well

aware that no "precepts will profit a fool," and he adapts old

advice to English ingeniously, in bidding men read, not only

Livy before Sallust, but also Sidney before Donne, and to

beware of Chaucer or Gower at first. Here occurs the well-

known dictum, that Spenser "in affecting the ancients writ no

language; yet I would have him read for his matter." A fine

general head opens with the excellent version of Quintilian,

"We should not protect our sloth with the patronage of

Difficulty," and this is followed by some shrewd remarks on

diction—the shrewdest being that, after all, the best custom

makes, and ever will continue to make, the best speech—with a

sharp stroke at Lucretius for "scabrousness," and at Chaucer-

isms. Brevity of style, Tacitean and other, is cautiously com-

mended. In the phrase (Oratio imago animi), p. 64, "language

most shows a man," Ben seems to anticipate Buffon, as he

later does Wordsworth and Coleridge, by insisting that style is

not merely the dress, but the body of thought.2 All this dis-

1 Perhaps, indeed, an exception and their contraries" on the part of

should be made in favour of the the poet.

section De malignitate Studiorum, p. 84, which reiterates the necessity of

"the exact knowledge of all virtues

2 He may have taken this from the

Italians.

86

ELIZABETHAN CRITICISM.

cussion, which enters into considerable detail, is of the first

importance, and it occupies nearly a quarter of the whole book.

It is continued, the continuation reaching till the end, by a

separate discussion of poetry.

It is interesting, but less so than what comes before. A

somewhat acid, though personally guarded, description of the

present state of the Art introduces the stock definition of

"making," and its corollary that a poet is not one who writes

in measure, but one who feigns—all as we have found it

before, but (as we should expect of Ben) in succincter and more

scholarly form. Yet the first requisite of the poet is ingenium

—goodness of natural wit; the next exercise of his parts—

"bringing all to the forge and file" (sculpte, lime, cisèle!); the

third Imitation—to which Ben gives a turn (not exactly new,

for we have met it from Vida downwards), which is not an

improvement, by keeping its modern meaning, and understand-

ing by it the following of the classics. "But that which we especi-

ally require in him is an exactness of study and multiplicity

of reading." Yet his liberty is not to be so narrowly circum-

scribed as some would have it. This leads to some interesting

remarks on the ancient critics, which the author had evidently

meant to extend: as it is, they break off short.1 We turn to the

Parts of comedy and tragedy, where Ben is strictly regular—the

fable is the imitation of one entire and perfect action, &c. But

this also breaks off, after a discussion of fable itself and episode,

with an evidently quite disconnected fling at "hobbling poems

which run like a brewer's cart on the stones."

These Discoveries have to be considered with a little general

care before we examine them more particularly. They were, it

Form of has been said, never issued by the author him-

the book. self, and we do not know whether he ever would

have issued them in their present form. On the one hand, they

are very carefully written, and not mere jottings. In form

(though more modern in style) they resemble the earlier essays

of that Bacon whom they so magnificently celebrate, in their

1 This is one of the most lacrimable

of the gaps. Ben must have known

other authorities besides Quintilian

well: he even quotes, though only in

part, the great passage of Simylus

(see Hist. Crit., i. 25 note).

deliberate conciseness and pregnancy. On the other hand, it is

almost impossible to doubt that some at least were intended for

expansion; it is difficult not to think that there was plenty

more stuff of the same kind in the solidly constructed and well-

stored treasuries of Ben's intelligence and erudition. It is most

difficult of all not to see that, in some cases, the thoughts are co-

ordinated into regular tractates, in others left loose, as if for

future treatment of the same kind.

Secondly, we should like to know rather more than we do of

the time of their composition. Some of them—such as the

retrospect of Bacon, and to a less degree that of

Shakespeare—must be late; there is a strong pro-

bability that all date from the period between the fire in Ben's

study, which destroyed so much, and his death—say between

1620 and 1637. But at the same time there is nothing to

prevent his having remembered and recopied observations of

earlier date.

Thirdly, it is most important that we rightly understand the

composition of the book. It has sometimes been discovered

1

in

Mosaic of these Discoveries, with pride, or surprise, or even

old and new. scorn, that Ben borrowed in them very largely from

the ancients. Of course he did, as well as something, though

less, from the Italian critics of the age immediately before his

own.

2

But in neither case could he have hoped for a moment

—and in neither is there the slightest reason to suppose that he

would have wished if he could have hoped—to disguise his

borrowings from a learned age. When a man—such as, for

1 Not by Dr Schelling, whose own

indagations of Ben's debts are most

interesting, and always made in the

right spirit, while, like a good farmer

and sportsman, he has left plenty for

those who come after him to glean and

bag. For instance, the very curious

passage, taken verbatim from the elder

Seneca, about the Platonic Apology

(cf. Hist. Crit., i. 237). As for M.

Castellain, he does, I think, exaggerate

the want of originality.

2 Yet in re-reading Jonson, just after

a pretty elaborate overhauling of the

Italians, I find very little certain in-

debtedness of detail. Mr Spingarn

seems to me to go too far in tracing,

p. 88, “small Latin and less Greek”

to Minturno's “small Latin and very

small Greek,” and the distinction of

poeta, poema, poesis to Scaliger or

Maggi. Fifty people might inde-

pendently have thought of the first ; and the

second is an application of a “common

form ” nearly as old as rhetoric. Ben,

however, owes a good deal to Heinsius.

33

ELIZABETHAN CRITICISM.

instance, Sterne—wishes to steal and escape, he goes to what

nobody reads, not to what everybody is reading. And the

Latins of the Silver Age, the two Senecas, Petronius, Quintilian,

Pliny, were specially favourites with the Jacobean time. In

what is going to be said no difference will be made between

Ben's borrowings and his original remarks: nor will the fact of

the borrowing be referred to unless there is some special critical

reason. Even the literal translations, which are not uncommon,

are made his own by the nervous idiosyncrasy of the phrase,

and its thorough adjustment to the context and to his own

vigorous and massive temperament.

Of real "book-criticism" there are four chief passages, the

brief flings at Montaigne and at "Tamerlanes and Tamer-

clams," and the longer notices of Shakespeare and Bacon.

The flirt at "all the Essayists, even their master Montaigne,"

is especially interesting, because of the high opinion which

The fling at Jonson elsewhere expresses of Bacon, the chief, if

Montaigne; not the first, English Essayist of his time, and

because of the fact that not a few of these very Discoveries are

"Essays," if any things ever were. Nor would it be very easy

to make out a clear distinction, in anything but name, between

some of Ben's most favourite ancient writers and these despised

persons. It is, however, somewhat easier to understand the

reason of the condemnation. Jonson's classically ordered mind

probably disliked the ostentatious desultoriness and incomplete-

ness of the Essay, the refusal, as it were out of mere insolence,

to undertake an orderly treatise. Nor is it quite impossible

that he failed fully to understand Montaigne, and was to some

extent the dupe of that great writer's fanfaronade of promis-

cuousness.

The "Tamerlane and Tamercham"1 fling is not even at

first sight surprising. It was quite certain that Ben would

seriously despise what Shakespeare only laughed at—the con-

1 P. 27. "The Tamerlanes and

Tamerchams of the late age, which

had nothing in them but the scenical

strutting and furious vociferation to

warrant them." It is just worth

noting that Jonson thought there was

more than this in Marlowe; and that

the early edd. of Tamburlaine are

anonymous.

fusion, the bombast, the want of order and scheme in the

at Tamer- "University Wits"—and it is not probable that he

lane, was well enough acquainted with the even now

obscure development of the earliest Elizabethan drama to

appreciate the enormous improvement which they wrought.

Nay, the nearer approach even of such a dull thing as

Gorboduc to "the height of Seneca his style," might have a

little bribed him as it bribed Sidney. He is true to his side

—to his division of the critical creed—in this also.

The train of thought—censure of the vulgar preference—

runs clear from this to the best known passage of the whole,

the Shake- the section De Shakespeare Nostrat. It cannot be

speare necessary to quote it, or to point out that Ben's

Passage, eulogy, splendid as it is, acquires tenfold force from

the fact that it is avowedly given by a man whose general literary

theory is different from that of the subject, while the censure

accompanying it loses force in exactly the same proportion.

What Ben here blames, any ancient critic (perhaps even

Longinus) would have blamed too: what Ben praises, it is not

certain that any ancient critic, except Longinus, would have

seen. Nor is the captious censure of "Cæsar did never wrong

but with just cause" the least interesting part of the whole.

The paradox is not in our present texts: and there have, of

course, not been wanting commentators to accuse Jonson of

garbling or of forgetfulness. This is quite commentatorially

gratuitous and puerile. It is very like Shakespeare to have

written what Ben says: very like Ben to object to the paradox

(which, pace tanti viri, is not "ridiculous" at all, but a de-

liberate and effective hyperbole); very like the players to have

changed the text; and most of all like the commentators to

make a fuss about the matter.

What may seem the more unstinted eulogy of Bacon is not

less interesting. For here it is obvious that Ben is speaking

and that with fullest sympathy, and with all but a full ac-

on Bacon. knowledgment of having met an ideal. Except the

slight stroke, "when he could spare or pass by a jest," and the

gentle insinuation that Strength, the gift of God, was what

90

ELIZABETHAN CRITICISM.

Bacon's friends had to implore for him, there is no admixture whatever in the eulogy of "him who hath filled up all numbers,1 and performed that in our tongue which may be compared or preferred to insolent Greece or haughty Rome." Indeed it could not have been—even if Ben Jonson had not been a friend, and, in a way, follower of Bacon—but that he should regard the Chancellor as his chief of literary men.

Bacon, unluckily for himself, lacked the "unwedgeable and gnarled" strength of the dramatist, and also was without his poetic fire, just as Ben could never have soared to the vast, if vague, conceptions of Bacon's materialist-Idealism. But they were both soaked in "literature," as then understood; they were the two greatest masters of the closely packed style that says twenty things in ten words: and yet both could, on occasion, be almost as rhetorically imaginative as Donne or Greville. It is doubtful whether Bacon's own scientific scorn for words without matter surpassed Jonson's more literary contempt of the same phenomenon. Everywhere, or almost everywhere, there was between them the idem velle et idem nolle.

A limited précis, however, and a few remarks on special points, cannot do the Discoveries justice. The fragmentary character of the notes that compose it, the pregnant and deliberately "astringed" style in which these notes are written, so that they are themselves the bones, as it were, of a much larger treatise, defy such treatment. Yet it is full of value, as it gives us more than glimpses

"Of what a critic was in Jonson lost,"

or but piecemeal shown. We shall return, in the next chapter, to his relative position; but something should be said here of his intrinsic character.

1 One cannot but remember—with pity or glee, according to mood and temperament—how the Bacon-Shakespeare-maniacs have actually taken this in the sense of poetic "numbers." But

in truth their study is not likely to be much in haughty Rome and its language, or to have led them either to Petronius and his omne num[er]orum or to Seneca and his insolenti Græciæ.

BEN JONSON.

91

He does not, as must have been clearly seen, escape the

"classical" limitation. With some ignorance, doubtless, and

General doubtless also some contempt, of the actual achieve-

character of ments of prose romance, and with that stubborn

the book. distrust of the modern tongues for miscellaneous

prose purposes, which lasted till far into the seventeenth

century, if it did not actually survive into the eighteenth, he

still clings to the old mistakes about the identity of poetry and

"fiction," about the supremacy of oratory in prose. We hear

nothing about the "new versifying," though no doubt this

would have been fully treated in his handling of Campion and

Daniel: but had he had any approval for it, that approval

must have been glanced at. His preference for the (stopped)

couplet 1 foreshadowed that which, with beneficial effects in

some ways, if by no means in all, was to influence the whole

of English poetry, with the rarest exceptions, for nearly two

centuries. The personal arrogance which, as in Wordsworth's

case, affected all Ben's judgment of contemporaries, and which

is almost too fully reflected in the Drummond Conversations,

would probably have made even his more deliberate judgments

of these—his judgments "for publication"—inadequate. But

it is fair to remember that Ben's theory (if not entirely his

practice, especially in his exquisite lyrics and almost equally

exquisite masques) constrained him to be severe to those con-

temporaries, from Spenser, Shakespeare, and Donne down-

wards. The mission of the generation may be summed up in

the three words, Liberty, Variety, Romance. Jonson's tastes

were for Order, Uniformity, Classicism.

He is thus doubly interesting—interesting as putting both

with sounder scholarship and more original wit what men from

Ascham to Puttenham, and later, had been trying to say before

him, in the sense of adapting classical precepts to English : and

far more interesting as adumbrating, beforehand, the creed of

Dryden, and Pope, and Samuel Johnson. Many of his in-

dividual judgments are as shrewd as they are one-sided; they

are always well, and sometimes admirably, expressed, in a

1 Daniel had frankly defended enjambement.

92

ELIZABETHAN CRITICISM.

style which unites something of Elizabethan colour, and much

of Jacobean weight, with not a little of Augustan simplicity

and proportion. He does not head the line of English critics;

but he heads, and worthily, that of English critics who have

been great both in criticism and in creation.1

1 It seemed unnecessary to enlarge

self, it is perhaps desirable to repeat

the space given to the men of Eliza

and our James, by including the merer

grammarians and pedagogues, from

Mulcaster to that fervid Scot, Mr

Hume, who, in 1617, extolled the

"Orthography and Congruity" of his

native speech (ed. Wheatley, E.E.T.S.,

1865). Of Mulcaster, however, it de-

serves to be mentioned that, not so

much in his Positions (1581 : ed. Quick,

London, 1887), which have been, as in

his Elementarie, which should be, re-

printed, he displays a more than

Pléiade enthusiasm for the vernacular.

Unluckily this last is not easy of ac-

cess, even the B.M. copy being a

"Grenville" book, and hedged round

with forms and fears. As to Ben him-

writer, far too much stress has been

laid (even by Mr Spingarn in Camb.

Hist. of Eng. Lit. as above) on the

recent exhibition by a French critic

(also named supra) of his indebtedness

to the ancients, Heinsius, &c. This in-

debtedness ought always to have been

known to all and was known to some :

nor does it in any material degree

interfere with Jonson's position. His

selection and arrangement is some-

thing : his application to Shakespeare,

Bacon, Spenser, more : and after all,

in the vulgar sense of "originality,"

how much original criticism is there

in the world?

INTERCHAPTER I.

The proper appreciation of Renaissance criticism is hardly second in importance to that of the criticism of pure Antiquity. And without it, in regard to English criticism more particularly, the appreciation of what follows in our own language — of our "Augustan" criticism — is practically impossible. It is true that, except as regards Jonson, and perhaps even in his case to all but a small extent, our critics, from Dryden onwards, knew little of, and cared less for, their English predecessors. It is true also that the work of those predecessors, as exhibited in the last chapter, does not come to very much. But the total critical advance in Europe, though it had strayed into doubtful roads, had been considerable, indeed immense; and it had substituted an abundant literature of the subject for a practically entire neglect and ignoring of it. This literature began in Italy. But Italian criticism, active and voluminous as it was, settled very early into certain well-marked limits and channels, and almost wholly confined itself within them, though these channels underwent no infrequent intersection or confluence.

The main texts and patterns of the critics of the Italian Renaissance were three—the Ars Poetica of Horace, the Poetics of Aristotle, and the various Platonic places dealing with poetry. These latter had begun to affect Italian thought, directly or by transmission through this or that medium, before the close of the fourteenth century; and the maintenance of the Platonic ban, the refutation of it, or the more or less ingenious acceptance and evasion of it, with the help of the Platonic blessing, had been a tolerably familiar exer-

94

SUMMARY OF

uise from the time of Boccaccio to the time of Savonarola.

But Horace and Aristotle gave rules and patterns of much more definiteness. Of the writers of the abundant critical literature which has been partly surveyed, some directly comment these texts; others follow them with more or less selection or combination; many take up separate questions suggested by them; very few, if any, face the subject without some prepossession derived from them. There is the almost abject “Ancient-worship” and exhortation to “steal” of Vida; there are the doubts as to Romance being subject, or not, to the rules of Epic; there is the attempt at historic estimate.

But between all the schools, and from among the welter of the individuals, there arises, in the mysterious way in which such things do arise, and which defies all but shallow and superficial explanation, a sort of general critical creed, every particular article of which would probably have been signed by no two particular persons—perhaps by no one—but which is ready to become, and in the next century does become, orthodox and accepted as a whole. And this creed runs somewhat as follows:-

On the higher and more abstract questions of poetry (which are by no means to be neglected) Aristotle is the guide; but the meaning of Aristotle is not always self-evident even so far as it goes, and it sometimes requires supplementing. Poetry is the imitation of nature: but this imitation may be carried on either by copying nature as it is or by inventing things which do not actually exist, and have never actually existed, but which conduct themselves according to the laws of nature and reason. The poet is not a public nuisance, but quite the contrary. He must, however, both delight and instruct.

As for the Kinds of poetry, they are not mere working classifications of the practice of poets, but have technically constituting definitions from which they might be independently developed, and according to which they ought to be composed. The general laws of Tragedy are given by Aristotle; but it is necessary to extend his prescription of Unity so as to enjoin three species—of Action,

RENAISSANCE CRITICISM.

95

Time, and Place. Tragedy must be written in verse,

which, though not exactly the constituting form of poetry

generally, is almost or quite inseparable from it. The

illegitimacy of prose in Comedy is less positive. Certain

extensions of the rules of the older Epic may be admitted,

so as to constitute a new Epic or Heroic Poem; but it is

questionable whether this may have the full liberty of

Romance, and it is subject to Unity, though not to the

dramatic Unity. Other Kinds are inferior to these.

In practising them, and in practising all, the poet is to

look first, midmost, and last to the practice of the

ancients. "The ancients" may even occasionally be con-

tracted to little more than Virgil; they may be extended

to take in Homer, or may be construed much more widely.

But taking things on the whole, "the ancients" have an-

ticipated almost everything, and in everything that they

have anticipated have done so well that the best chance

of success is simply to imitate them. The detailed pre-

cepts of Horace are never to be neglected; if supple-

mented, they must be supplemented in the same sense.

It is less the business of the historian, after drawing up this

creed, to criticise it favourably or unfavourably, than to point

out that it had actually, by the year 1600, come very near to

formulated existence. We shall find it in actual formulation in

the ensuing chapter; we have already seen it in more than

adumbration, governing the pronouncements of a scholar and a

man of genius like Ben Jonson, thirty years later than the close

of the sixteenth century. A full estimate of its merits and

demerits would not be in place at this juncture. But it

may be observed at once that it is, prima facie, not a per-

fect creed by any means. It has (and this, I think, has

been too seldom noticed) a fault, almost, if not quite, as

great on the a priori side as that which it confessedly has

on the a posteriori. It does not face the facts; it blinks

all mediæval and a great deal of existing modern liter-

ature. But, then, to do it justice, it does not pretend

to do other than blink them. The fault in its own more

special province is much more glaring, though, as has been

said, it has, by a sort of sympathy, been much more ignored.

There is no real connection between the higher and the lower

principles of Neo-Classicism. There is not merely one crevasse,

not easily to be crossed, in this glacier of Correctness ; there

are two or three.

Yet it would be an act of the grossest injustice and ingrati-

tude to refuse or to stint recognition of the immense services

that the Italians rendered to criticism at this time. It was, in

their own stately word, a veritable case of risorgimento ; and of

resurrection in a body far better organised, far more gifted, than

that which had gone to sleep a thousand years before.

It is something—nay, it is very much—to have created a

Kind. Up to their tine Criticism had been a mere Cinderella

in the literary household. Aristotle had taken her up as he

had taken all Arts and Sciences. The Rhetoricians had found

her a useful handmaid to Rhetoric. Roman dilettanti had

dallied with her. The solid good sense and good feeling of

Quintilian had decided that she must be “no casual mistress

but a wife” (perhaps on rather polygamic principles) to the

student of oratory. Longinus had suddenly fixed her colours

on his helmet, and had ridden in her honour the most astonish-

ing little chevauchée in the annals of adventurous literature.

The second greatest poet of the world—Dante—had done her

at once yeoman’s service and stately courtesy. And yet she

was, in the general literary view, not so much déclassée as not

classed at all—not “out,” not accorded the entrées.

This was now all over. The country which gave the literary

tone and set the literary fashions of Europe had adopted

Criticism in the most unmistakable manner—whether in the

manner wisest or most perfect is not for the present essential.

Rank thus given is never lost ; at any rate, there is no

recorded instance of a literary attainder for Kinds, whatever

there may be for persons.

When this criticism passes the Alps, a curious difference is

to be perceived. French criticism, soon to be the most import-

ant of all, is at first by much the least important. Not only

does it begin late ; not only does it fail to be very fertile ; but its

individual documents require a certain kindness to speak very

highly of their virtues, and a good deal of blindness to conceal

their shortcomings. The criticism of Du Bellay and Ronsard

is, indeed, extremely germinal. Those who contend that the

classical French criticism of the seventeenth century was only

the Pléiade criticism of the sixteenth, denying its masters,

omitting some, if not always the worst, parts of their creed,

narrowed in range, and perfected in apparent system, have a

great deal to say for themselves. But this criticism is exceed-

ingly limited; and it tends almost exclusively to the promo-

tion, not the grouping, of literature.

Again, in such work as Vauquelin de la Fresnaye's1 we have

the whole of the Italian teaching that had commended itself

to the French mind up to this time, with such additions and

corrections as the vernacular needed. We see in it the obses-

sion of the "long poem," which France was not to outgrow for

two centuries, and which weighed not a little on England. We

see the tendency to burden criticism with innumerable petty

"rules" and "licences," which was also to beset the nation.

But once more, there is little real criticism in it.

Crossing the Channel, as we just now crossed the Alps, we do

not find a simple transmission of indebtedness. It would have

been surprising, considering the strong intellectual interests of

the Colet group, and the early presence in England of such a

critical force as Erasmus, if this country had waited to receive

a current merely transmitted through France from Italy. It

is possible that, later, Gascoigne may have derived something

from Ronsard, and it is quite certain that "E. K.'s" notes on

the Calendar show symptoms of Pléiade influence, even in the

bad point of contempt, or at least want of respect, for Marot.

But it is exceedingly improbable that Ascham derived any

impulsion from Du Bellay: it is certain, as we have seen, that

he knew Italian critics like Pigna directly; and it is equally

1 It may be noted here, once for all, History if the student cares to seek

that further and generally full infor-

mation, on all foreign critics men-

tioned, will be found in the larger

drifts and influences is given here.

98

SUMMARY OF

certain that, either by his own studies or through Cheke, his

critical impulses must have been excited humanistically long

before the French had got beyond the merely rhétoriccur

standard.

Hence, as well as for other reasons, English criticism de-

velops itself, if not with entire independence, yet with sufficient

conformity to its own needs. That practical bent which we

have noticed in the French shows itself here also; but it is con-

ditioned differently. We had, as they had in France, to fashion

a new poetic diction; but it cannot be said that the critics did

much for this : Spenser, as much as Coriolanus, might have

said, "Alone I did it." They did more in re metrica, and it so

happened that they had, quite in their own sphere, to fight an

all-important battle, the battle of the classical metres, which

was of nothing like the same importance in French or in

Italian. In dealing with these and other matters they fall into

certain generations or successive groups.

In Ascham and his contemporaries the critical attitude was

induced, but not altogether favourably conditioned, by certain

forces, partly common to them with their Continental contem-

poraries, partly not. They all felt, in a degree most creditable

to themselves (and contrasting most favourably with the rather

opposite feeling of men so much greater and so much later as

Bacon and Hobbes), that they must adorn their Sparta, that it

was their business to get the vernacular into as good working

order, both for prose and verse, as they possibly could. And

what is more, they had some shrewd notions about the best

way of doing this. The exaggerated rhetoric and "aureateness"

of the fifteenth century had inspired them, to a man, with a

horror of "inkhorn terms," and, if mainly wrong, they were

also partly right in feeling that the just and deserved popularity

of the early printed editions of the whole of Chaucer threatened

English with an undue dose of archaism.

Further, they were provided by the New Learning, not

merely with a very large stock of finished examples of litera-

ture, but also with a not inconsiderable library of regular

criticism. They did their best to utilise these; but, in thus

endeavouring, they fell into two opposite, yet in a manner com-

plementary, errors. In the first place, they failed altogether to

recognise the continuity, and in a certain sense the equipollence,

of literature-the fact that to blot out a thousand years of

literary history, as they tried to do, is unnatural and destructive.

In the second place, though their instinct told them rightly that

Greek and Latin had invaluable lessons and models for English,

their reason failed to tell them that these lessons must be

applied, these models used, with special reference to the nature,

the history, the development of English itself. Hence they fell,

as regards verse, into the egregious and fortunately self-correct-

ing error of the classical metres, as regards prose, into a fash-

ion of style, by no means insalutary as a corrective and reaction

from the rhetorical bombast and clumsiness of the Transition,

but inadequate of itself, and needing to be counterdosed by the

fustian and the familiarity which are the worst sides of Euphu-

ism, in order to bring about the next stage. Lastly, these men

looked too much to the future, and not enough to the past:

they did not so much as condescend to examine the literary

manner and nature even of Chaucer himself, still less of

others.

In the next generation, which gives us Gascoigne, Webbe,

Puttenham, and Sidney, the same tendencies are perceived;

but the Euphuist movement comes in to differentiate them on

one side, and the influence of Italian criticism on the other.

The classical metre craze has not yet been blown to pieces by

the failure of even such a poet as Spenser to do any good

with it, the fortunate recalcitrance of the healthy English

spirit, and at last the crushing broadside of Daniel's Defence of

Rhyme. But it does no very great practical harm: and prose

style is sensibly beautified and heightened. Some attempts are

made, from Gascoigne downwards, to examine the actual wealth

of English, to appraise writers, to analyse methods-attempts,

however, not very well sustained, and still conditioned by the

apparent ignorance of the writers that there was anything be-

hind Chaucer, though Anglo-Saxon was actually studied at the

time under Archbishop Parker's influence. Further, the ex-

ample of the Italian critics deflects the energy of our writers

from the right way, and sends them off into pretty Platonisings

100

SUMMARY OF

about the proud place due to poetry, the stately status of the

singer, and other agreeable but unpractical aberrations. This

tendency is much strengthened by the Puritan onslaught on

poetry generally and dramatic poetry in particular. In all this

there is a great deal of interest, and many scattered aperçus of

much value. Gascoigne's little treatise is almost priceless, as

showing us how English prosody was drifting on the shallows

of a hard-and-fast syllabic arrangement, when the dramatists

came to its rescue. Sidney, wrong as he is about the drama,

catches hold of one of the very lifebuoys of English poetry in

his praise of the ballad. Daniel's Defence puts the root of the

rhyme-matter in the most admirable fashion. But we see

that the classics are exercising on all the men of the time in-

fluences both bad and good, and in criticism, perhaps, rather

bad than good; that the obsession of Latin in particular is

heavy on them; and that the practice, both Latin and Greek,

of what we have called beginning at the wrong end lies

heaviest of all.

Nothing will show this more curiously than the words in

which Sidney anticipated (and perhaps suggested) Ben's censure

of Spenser's diction as to the Shepherd's Calendar, especially if

we remember that they proceeded from a personal friend and by

an ardent lover of poetry. That there is something to be said

against the dialect of the Calendar all reasonable critics will

allow. As a poetic language it is, at its best, but a preliminary

exercise for the glorious medium of The Faerie Queene; it is

awkwardly and in some cases incorrectly blended; and, above

all, the mere rusticity — the "hey-ho" and the rest — is a

dangerous and doubtful expedient. But observe that Sidney

says nothing of this kind. He "looks merely at the stop-

watch." Theocritus did not do it; Virgil did not do it;

Sannazar did not do it; therefore Spenser must not do it.

That his own elevation of a mere modern like Sannazar to

this position of a lawgiver of the most tyrannic kind — of

an authority not merely whose will is law, not merely whose

prohibition is final, but whose bare abstention from some-

thing taboos that something from the use of all mankind for

ever and ever,—that this did not strike Sidney as preposter-

RENAISSANCE CRITICISM.

101

ous in itself, and as throwing doubt on the whole method,

is wonderful. But even if he had stopped at Theocritus and

Virgil, he would have been wrong enough. Here once more

is the false Mimesis, the prava imitatio. Not only is the

good poet to be followed in what he does, but what he

does not do serves as a bar to posterity in all time from

doing it.

There is another point in which Sidney and Ben are alike,

and in which they may even seem to anticipate that general

adoption of “ Reason,” of “Good Sense” as the criterion, which

the late seventeenth and eighteenth centuries claimed as their

own, and which some recent critics have rather kindly allowed

them. Sidney’s raillery of the Romantic life-drama, Ben’s

reported strictures on the sea-coast of Bohemia, and his certain

ones on “Cæsar did never wrong,” &c., express the very spirit

of this cheap rationalism, which was later to defray a little even

of Dryden’s criticism, almost the whole of Boileau’s, and far too

much of Pope’s. The ancients, to do them justice, are not

entirely to be blamed for this. There is very little of it in

Aristotle, who quite understands that the laws of poetry are not

the laws of history or of science.1 But there is a great deal of

it in Horace : and, as we shall see, the authority of the great

Greek was, during the three centuries which form the subject of

this volume, more and more used as a mere cloak for the

opinions of the clever Roman. Meanwhile, such books as those

of Webbe and Puttenham, such an ordeal by battle as that

fought out by Campion and Daniel, even such critical jaculata

as those of Meres and Bolton,2 were all in different ways doing

1 Yet even he does condescend to it

too much in his notices of “objections”

towards the end of the Poetics.

2 These judgments might of course

be reinforced enormously by extracts

from letters and poems commendatory,

as well as from substantive examples,

of Elizabethan literature, prose or

verse. But this is just one of the

points in which the constantly increas-

ing pressure of material makes abstin-

ence, or at least rigid temperance,

necessary as we come downwards.

Some very notable passages in creative

works — Shakespeare’s remarks on

drama among the more, and Ben’s

on “men’s and women’s poets” among

the less — are glanced at elsewhere :

Webster’s famous “catalogue dérai-

onné” (yet not wholly so) of his great

companions, and his odd confession of

inability to manage “the passionate

and weighty numtius,” tempts fuller

notice. But one must refrain.

102

SUMMARY OF

work, mistaken sometimes in kind, but always useful in general effect.

On the general Elizabethan position, as we have seen, Jonson himself made no great advance: in fact, he threw fresh intrenchments around it and fresh forces into its garrison. We may even, contrary to our wont in such cases, be rather glad that he did not enter upon a more extensive examination of his own contemporaries, because it is quite clear that he was not at the right point of view for making it. But it does not follow from this that he was not a critic, and a great critic. No one who was not this could have written the Shakespeare and the Bacon passages--in fact, in the former case, only a great magnanimity and a true sense of critical truth could have mixed so generous an acknowledgment with the candid avowal of so much disapproval. And, as we have said above, even where Ben was wrong, or at least insufficient, his critical gospel was the thing needed for the time to come, if not for the actual time. By a few years after his own death--by the middle of the century, that is to say--seventy years and more of such a harvest as no other country has ever had, had filled the barns of English to bursting with the ripest crops of romantic luxuriance -- its treasure-houses with the gold and the ivory and the spices--if sometimes also with the apes and the peacocks--of Romantic exploration and discovery. There was no need to invite further acquisition -- the national genius, in Ben's own quotation, sufflaminandus erat. It was his task to begin the sufflamination: and he did it, not perhaps with a full apprehension of the circumstances, and certainly with nothing like a full appreciation of what the age, from its "Tamerlanes and Tamerchams" onwards, had done; but still did it. In his most remarkable book we see the last word of Elizabethan criticism, not merely in point of time, but in the other sense. Ben is beyond even Sidney, much more Webbe and Puttenham, not to mention Ascham and Wilson, in grasp; while, if we compare him with the Continental critics of his own time, he shows a greater sense of real literature than almost any of them. But, at the same time, he has not occupied the true standing-ground of the critic; he has not even set his foot on it,

as Dryden, born before his death, was to do. In him, as in all

these Renaissance critics, we find, not so much positive errors

as an inability to perceive clearly where they are and what

their work is.

But between Ben and Dryden, though the actual interval

of time was small, a great change of influence took place,

and the position of European countries, in regard to its exer-

cise, changed even more remarkably. Although there is

still a large body of Italian criticism belonging to the seven-

teenth century, it includes among its authors no single name

of great authority; and its contents are for the most part

negligible. The "Ancient and Modern" quarrel is indeed

started in Italy; but it does not acquire European position

till it has been restarted in France. And in France, much

earlier and to much greater purpose, the "Neo-classic" creed,

formulated above, reinforces, concentrates, and entrenches it-

self in the most remarkable fashion. The establishment of

the French Academy embodies this critical tendency in a

world-noticeable fashion; the quarrel over the Cid illustrates

it; and after the strictures of Malherbe (as condemning the

Romantic element that lurked in the Pléiade), the half

recalcitrant, half Unitarian utterances of Corneille himself;

the obscurantist neo-classicism (in drama, if not elsewhere)

of Chapelain and the lesser names of La Mesnardière, Mambrun,

the Abbé d'Aubignac, and others,—the neo-classic attitude

found its greatest expression in Boileau, with his deification

of "Nature" and "Good Sense" in general, and his thousand

arbitrary prescriptions and prohibitions in particular. This

movement partly preceded, partly coincided with, the earlier

English writers to be noticed in the next chapter; but it

undoubtedly exercised influence in England, and Dryden

may be taken as partly expressing, partly resisting and

revolting from, the ideas of Boileau (1669) himself and of

his contemporaries or successors, Rapin (1674) and Le Bossu

(1680).

France, however, had not been won for Neo-Classicism with-

out something of a struggle; and in the earlier seventeenth

century a few persons (such as the little known Jean de

104 SUMMARY OF RENAISSANCE CRITICISM.

Schélandre, author of Tyr et Sidon) made endeavours at the

English-Spanish tragi-comic or romantic-tragic pattern of drama.

While in Spain itself, partly under the influence of the

national theatre, partly in pursuance of the protests of some

Italians earlier, a remarkable series of expressions adverse

to the Neo-classic theories can be gleaned from Alfonso

Sanchez (1618), Tirso de Mollina (1624), and Gonzales de

Salas (1633), all arguing for liberty in drama; rules adjusted

to, not a priori controlling, work; and a “nature” which

is not the Bolæan convention. But despite an unconfirmed

and late assertion (quite contrary to all likelihood) that

Dryden was acquainted with Spanish criticism, these views

seem to have attracted no notice, and exerted no influence,

outside of Spain itself.1

1 Characteristic examples of the ferred to will be found in Loci

French and Spanish criticism re- Critici.

105

DRYDEN AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES.

DEAD WATER IN ENGLISH CRITICISM—MILTON—COWLEY—THE PREFATORY

MATTER OF ‘GONDIBERT’ — THE “HEROIC POEM” — DAVENANT'S ‘EX-

AMEN’—HOBBES'S ANSWER—DRYDEN—HIS ADVANTAGES—THE EARLY

PREFACES — THE ‘ESSAY OF DRAMATIC POESY’ — ITS SETTING AND

OVER1URE — CRITES FOR THE ANCIENTS — EUGENIUS FOR THE “LAST

AGE” — LISIDEIUS FOR THE FRENCH — DRYDEN FOR ENGLAND AND

LIBERTY—‘CODA’ ON RHYMED PLAYS, AND CONCLUSION—CONSPICUOUS

MERITS OF THE PIECE — THE MIDDLE PREFACES — THE ‘ESSAY ON

SATIRE’ AND THE ‘DEDICATION OF THE ÆNEIS’ — THE PARALLEL OF

POETRY AND PAINTING — THE ‘PREFACE TO THE FABLES’ — DRYDEN'S

GENERAL CRITICAL POSITION—HIS SPECIAL CRITICAL METHOD—DRYDEN

AND BOILEAU—RYMER—THE ‘PREFACE TO RAPIN’—THE ‘TRAGEDIES

OF THE LAST AGE’—THE ‘SHORT VIEW OF TRAGEDY’—THE RULE OF TOM

THE SECOND—SPRAT—EDWARD PHILLIPS—HIS ‘THEATRUM POETARUM’

—WINSTANLEY'S ‘LIVES’—LANGBAINE'S ‘DRAMATIC POETS’—TEMPLE—

BENTLEY—COLLIER'S ‘SHORT VIEW’—SIR T. P. BLOUNT—PERIODICALS :

THE ‘ATHENIAN MERCURY,’ ETC.

The middle third, if not the whole first half, of the seventeenth

century in England was too much occupied with civil and re-

ligious broils to devote attention to such a subject

as literary criticism. Between the probable date of

Jonson's Timber (1625-37) and the certain one of

Dryden's Essay of Dramatic Poesy (1668) we have practically

nothing substantive save the interesting prefatory matter to

Gondibert (1650). Milton, the greatest man of letters

wholly of the time, must indeed during this time

have conceived, or at least matured, that cross-grained prejudice

against rhyme, which is more surprising in him than even in Cam-

pion, and which was itself even more open to Daniel's strictures.

For not only is Milton himself in his own practice a greater

and more triumphant vindicator of rhyme than Campion, but

Daniel's strongest and soundest argument, "Why condemn this

thing in order to establish that?" applies far more strongly to

blank verse than to Campion's artificial metres. Custom and

Nature, those greater Caesars to whom Daniel so triumphantly

appealed, had already settled it, as they were to confirm it later,

that rhymed and unrhymed verse, each obeying the natural

evolution of English prosody, should be the twin horses to

draw its car. But Milton never developed his antipathy to

rhyme (which in all probability arose, mainly if not merely,

from the fact that nearly all the most exquisite rhymers

of his time, except himself, were Cavaliers) in any critical

fashion, contenting himself with occasional flings and obiter

dicta.1

Another poet of the time, Cowley, ought to have given us

criticism of real importance. He had the paramount, if not

exclusive, literary interests which are necessary to

Cowley. a great critic; he had the knowledge; and he

was perhaps the first man in England to possess the best

kind of critical style—lighter than Daniel's, and less pregnant,

involved, and scholastic than Jonson's—the style of well-bred

1 The chief critical loci in Milton are all among the best known passages of

his work. They are the peremptory

anathema on rhyme in the prose note

added to Paradise Lost, in what Professor Masson has settled to be the

"Fifth Form of the First Edition";

the short Defence of Tragedy (wholly

on Italian principles but adapted to

Puritan understandings) prefixed to

Samson Agonistes; the first description

of his own studies in The Reason of

Church Government; the more elaborate

return upon that subject—a singular

mixture of exquisite phrasing and lit-

erary appreciation with insolent abuse

-in the Apology for Smectymnuus

(which is not, as some have thought,

the same thing as The [Platonic]

Apology) and divers clauses in the

Tractate of Education, especially the

reference to "Castelvetro, Tasso, and

Mazzoni," whom he credits with "sub-

lime art," and puts on a level with

Aristotle and Horace. We might add

a few casual girds, such as that at the

supposed cacophony of Hall's "Teach

each" in the Apology for Smectymnuus,

which has been compared to Malherbe's

vellications of Desportes (Hist. Crit., ii.

245). A complete critical treatise from

him (if only he could have been pre-

vailed upon to write in a good temper)

would have been of supreme interest :

it is not so certain that it would have

been of supreme value, even if he had

been in that temper.

conversational argument.1 But he was a little bitten with the

scientific as opposed to the literary mania, and, in his own

person, he was perhaps too much of a Janus as regards

literary tastes to be able to give—or indeed to take—a clear

and single view. There were, as in Lope, two poets in Cowley,

and each of these was wont to get in the way of the other.

The one was a “metaphysical” of the high flight, who at

least would, if he could, have been as intensely fantastic as

Donne, and as gracefully fantastic as Suckling. The other

was a classical, “sensible,” couplet-poet, who was working

out Ben Jonson’s theories with even less admixture of

Romanticism than that which tinged Ben Jonson’s practice.

The entanglement of these was sufficiently detrimental to his

poetry ; but it would have been absolutely fatal to his criti-

cism, which must either have perpetually contradicted itself

or else have wandered in a maze, perplexing as perplexed.

It is with Davenant’s Preface to Gondibert, in the form of

a Letter to Hobbes, and with Hobbes’s answer to it,2 that

The

Prefatory

matter of

Gondibert.

England strikes once more into the main path of

European critical development. And it is of capital

importance that, both the writers being exiled

royalists, these documents were written at Paris

in the year 1650. There was much interest there in English

affairs, while, as we have seen, the habit of literary discussion

1 He has practically given us nothing

but a slight apology for sacred verse

(common in his time and natural

from the author of the Davideis);

with a slighter seasoning of the also

familiar defence of poetry from being

mere “lying,” in the Preface to the

folio edition of his Poems ; some still

slighter remarks on Comedy in that to

Cutter of Coleman Street ; and hardly

more than a glance at literary education

in his Proposition for the Advancement

of Experimental Philosophy. In this

last we may feel a sort of ‘gust of the

same spirit which appears in his dis-

ciple Sprat’s History of the Royal Society

(v. infra).

2 Both these will be found in Chal-

mers’ Poets, vi. 349-372. Hobbes’s

Answer is also in Molesworth’s ed. of

the Works, iv. 443-458. It is there

followed by a short literary letter to

Edward Howard of the British Princes,

the most egregious of Dryden’s egregi-

ous leash of brothers-in-law. To these

may be added the brief literary pass-

age in the chapter of “ Intellectual

Virtues” in the First Part of Leviathan

(ibid., iii. 58) and the “Brief” of the

Rhetoric (compare Hist. Crit., i. 40) ;

ibid., vi. 416-510. I have a copy of

the first edition of this, anonymous

and undated, but assigned to 1655-57

by bibliographers. It does not contain

the shorter Art of Rhetoric, which fol-

lows in Molesworth.

108

DRYDEN AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES.

had, for more than a generation, become ingrained in French-

men. When Davenant set himself to write Gondibert, he was

doing exactly what Chapelain and Desmarets and the rest were

doing; and when he and his greater friend exchanged their

epistles, they were doing exactly what all the French literary

world had been doing, not merely, as is commonly thought,

from the time of the Cid dispute, but from one much earlier.

Taking all things together, it was natural that the subject

should be the Heroic Poem, which had been a favourite of

Italian and French critics for some seventy years and more

but had been little touched in England, though the conclusion

of Ben's Discoveries shapes a course for it. It was at the

moment interesting France immensely, and producing those

curious epics or quasi-epics of Chapelain, Scudéry, St Amant,

the Père Le Moyne, and others, which were before very long

to incur the bitter, not entirely just, but partly justified and

almost destructive answer of Boileau.

The "Heroic Poem" was to be neither pure Romance nor

pure Epic, but a sort of medley between the two. Or, rather, it

The "Heroic was to be a thing of shreds and patches, strictly epic

Poem." (or at least Virgilian-epical) in theory and rules, but

borrowing from Romance whatever it could, as our Elizabethans

would say, "convey cleanly" enough in the way of additional

attractions. The shreds and patches, too, were not purely

poetical : they were not taken simply from Homer and Virgil,

nor even from Horace, Virgil, Lucan, Statius, and the rest down

to that Musæus whom Scaliger thought so superior to the Chian.

A great deal of ancient critical dictum was brought in, and as

Aristotle and Horace had said less about Epic than about

Drama, they were to be supplemented from others, especially

by that treacherous and somewhat obscure passage of Petronius

which has been referred to above (chap. i.) In fact the whole

Kinds, in its attempt—and failure—to discover a Kind. If the

founders of the novel (who, indeed, in some notable cases were

by no means free from the obsession) had persisted in construct-

ing it on the lines of the Heroic Poem, it would indeed have

been all up with Fiction. To read Tasso (who, as we might

expect, is not the least reasonable) and others, from Ronsard

and Du Bellay down to Desmarets and Le Bossu (both of

whom, let it be remembered, wrote some time after Davenant)

—to find even Dryden a Martha of “machinery,” and com-

forting himself with a bright new idea of getting the deorum

ministeria out of the limited intelligences of angels, so that you

might not know at once which side was going to win, as you do

in the ordinary Christian Epic 1—is curious. Nay, it is more—

humorous, with that touch of “the pity of it” which humour

nearly always has.

The ingenious knight, in explaining his performance and its

principles to his friend the philosopher, takes a very high tone.

Davenant’s Homer, Virgil, Lucan, and Statius are passed success-

ively in review, and receive each his appropriate com-

pliment, put with dignified reserves, especially in the two latter

cases. Only two moderns are admitted—Tasso of the Italians

—“for I will yield to their opinion who permit not Ariosto—

no, not Du Bartas—in this eminent rank of the heroicks, rather

than to make way by their admission for Dante, Marino, and

others” 2—and Spenser of our own men. But Tasso is roundly

taken to task for his fairy-tale element, Spenser for his allegory

and his archaism. And the faults of all from Homer down-

wards are charged against “the natural humour of imita-

tion.” 3

After a by no means despicable, but somewhat rhapsodical,

1 See the Discourse on Satire—Scott (in the edition revised by the present

writer) (London, 1882-93), xiii. 24 sq.,

or Ker (ed. cit. post), ii. 33 sq.

2 I do not smile so much as some

may over “no, not Du Bartas.” But

though oases are far from rare in what

may seem, to those who know it not,

this thirsty land of criticism, I hardly

know a more delightful “diamond of

the desert” than the refusal to admit

somebody else lest you should have

to admit Dante, and the subsequent

“Dante, Marino, and others.” When

the eye is weary of italic print, or of a

too closely packed quarto page, or of

François Hédelin, Abbé d’Aubignac, in

any type or format, it is pleasant half

to shut it, and let the dream of these

“others” wave before one. I see that

they must have written in Italian ; but

other common measure, other link to

bind them both to the Commedia and

to the Adone, is yet to seek for me.

3 Lest the last note should lead any

one to think that I wish to make

inept and ignoble game of Davenant,

let me observe that he can write ad-

110

DRYDEN AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES.

digression on this it is to be observed that Davenant uses

"Imitation" in the frank modern sense—and an apology for it

as "the dangerous fit of a hot writer," he gives reasons, partly

no doubt drawn from Italian and French sources, why he has

made his subject (1) Christian, (2) antique but not historical,

(3) foreign, (4) courtly and martial, (5) displaying the distem-

pers of love and ambition. Then he expounds in turn his

arrangement of five books (to correspond to acts), with cantos

to answer to scenes,1 his arguments, his quatrain-stanza. He

asserts thq', "the substance is Wit,' and discusses that matter at

some length, and with a noteworthy hit at conceits, which re-

minds us that Davenant was à cheval between the First and

the Second Caroline period. He indulges in not unpardon-

able loquacity about his poetic aspirations, with a fresh

glance at the great poets of old, and brings in thereby, with

some ingenuity but at too great length as a finale, the old

prefatory matter of the Ars Poetic about the importance

and dignity of poetry in the world, concluding exactly where

most begin, with Plato and that "divine anger" of his

which some have turned to the "unjust scandal of Poesie."

And so a pleasant echo of Sir Philip blends agreeably

with the more prosaic tone, and time, and temper of Sir

William.

Hobbes, as we should expect, is much briefer; and those

bronze sentences of his (thougi t had not at this time quite

Hobbes's brought them to their full ring and perfect circum-

Answer. scription) give no uncertain sound. He is not, he

says, a poet (which is true), and when he assigns to Gondibert

"various experience, ready memory, clear judgment, swift and

well-governed fancy," it is obvious enough that all these might

be there and yet poetry be absent. He divides the kinds of

mirable things, worthy a son, in double

sense, of Oxford. Could anything be

happier than this of Spenser : "His

noble and most artful hands"? The

mere selection of the epithets is good,

the combination of them famously so.

1 This attempt to get Epic as close

as possible to Drama—to work all the

kinds of Imitation back into one arch-

kind—appears more or less fitfully in

the whole Neo-Classic school. And we

shall never quite understand the much

discussed "Heroic Play," till we take

it in conjunction with the "Heroic

Poem" (see the present writer's Curo-

line Poets (Oxford, 1905-6)).

poetry “swiftly” enough, and ranges himself with his customary

decision against those who “ take for poesy whatsoever is writ

in verse,” cutting out not merely didactic poetry, but sonnets,

epigrams, and eclogues, and laying it down that “ the subject of

a poem is the manners of men.” “ They that give entrance to

fictions writ in prose err not so much,” but they err. And

accordingly he begins the discussion of verse. He does not

quarrel with Davenant, as Vida would have done, for deliber-

ately eschewing Invocation ; and rapidly comments on the plot,

characters, description, &c., of the poem. On the head of diction

he would not be Hobbes if he could or did spare a sneer at words

of no sense, words “ contunded by the schools,” and so forth.

And since he is Hobbes, there is piquancy in finding him at

one with Walton in the objection to “ strong lines.” He is

rather striking on a subject which has been much dwelt on of

late, the blunting of poetic phrase by use. And when he says

that he “ never yet saw poem that had so much shape of art,

health of morality, and vigour of beauty and expression ” as

Gondibert—when, in the odd timorousness he had caught from

Bacon, he adds, that it is only the perishableness of the modern

tongues which will prevent it from lasting as long as the Æneid

or the Iliad—let us remember that, though criticism is one

thing and compliment another, they sometimes live in a rather

illicit contiguity. There is criticism, and real

criticism ; and they are about the first sub-

stantial

said for it.

Thus, although they were of the greatest of our

writers, the third an interesting failure of greatness, and the

fourth far from contemptible, they were in all cases prevented,

by this or that disqualification, from doing much in criticism.

Dryden, on the contrary, started with every advantage, ex-

cept those of a body of English criticism behind him,

and of a thorough knowledge of the whole of Eng-

lish literature. He was a poet nearly, if not quite, of the first

1 There is, of course, critical matter kind that we must now neglect, or select

in Howell's Letters, and in a score or from with the most jealous hand.

scores of other places ; but it is of the

112

DRYDEN AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES.

class: and though his poetry had a strong Romantic spirit in

virtue of its perennial quality, it took the form and pressure of

the time so thoroughly and so kindly that there was no internal

conflict. Further, he had what by no means all poets of the

first class have had, a strong, clear, common-sense judgment, and

a very remarkable faculty of arguing the point. And, finally,

if he had few predecessors in English, and perhaps did not know

much of those few except of Jonson, he was fairly, if not exactly

as a scholar, acquainted with the ancients, and he had profited,

and was to profit, by the best doctrine of the moderns.

Moreover, from a certain not unimportant point of view, he

occupies a position which is only shared in the history of

His criticism by Dante and (in some estimations, though

advantages. not in all) by Goethe,—the position of the greatest

man of letters in his own country, if not also in Europe, who is

at the same time the greatest critic, and who is favoured by

Fortune with a concentration of advantages as to time and

circumstance. His critical excellence has indeed been never

wholly overlooked, and, except by the unjuster partisanship of

the early Romantic movement in England, generally admitted

with cheerfulness.1 The want, however, of that synoptic study

of the subject, (which it is the humble purpose of this book to

facilitate) has too often prevented its full eminence from

being recognised. It may be that Dryden best shows

been denied him elsewhere,

everywhere. He copies, with

opinions of the critics and the stock

pages on pages of their peculiar

shrewd and racy judgments. But, despite of all this, there is in

him (and with good luck we may perhaps not fail to disengage

1 Of the great critical men of letters

of 1800-1850 only Leigh Hunt—the

least of them—was just to Dryden;

even Hazlitt is inadequate on him.

Among our preceptistas of the same or

a little later date, Keble (Prcel. v.)

mildly perstringes Dryden's inconsistency ("male sibi constat D."), but

rather as poet than as critic. Garbett,

his successor and opponent, a great

admirer of Dryden's style, and one who

expresses just regret at the want of

common knowledge of it, is very severe

(Prcel. x.) on his want of philosophical

profundity and sincerity. But the

reverend Professor had found nearly as

much fault on this score with Longinus.

DRYDEN.

113

it) a vein and style in "judging of Authours" which goes straight back to Longinus, if it is not even independent of that great ancestry.1

(This vein is perceptible2 even in the slight critical essays which precede the Essay of Dramatic Poesy, though of course it

The Early is much more evident in the Essay itself.) In the Prefaces.

preface to the Rival Ladies (written, not indeed when Dryden was a very young man, but when, except for Juvenilia, he had produced extremely little) we find his critical path clearly traced, and still more in the three years later Preface to Annus Mirabilis. The principles of this path-making are as follows :

Dryden takes—without perhaps a very laborious study of them, but, as has been said already, with an almost touching docility in appearance—the current theories and verdicts of the French, Italian (and Spanish ?) critics (sufficient survey of whom may be sought in the large History). (He does not—he never did to the date of the glorious Preface to the Fables itself—dispute the general doctrines of the sages from Aristotle downwards.) But (and this is where the Longinian resemblance comes in) he never can help considering the individual works of literature almost without regard to these principles, and simply on the broad, the sound, the unshakab1 ground of the impression they make on him. Secondly ' is is where the resemblance to Dante comes in), he " that questions of diction, metre, and t. after-thoughts, as an wo apt to think them, but at the root of th rature gives. Thirdly (and

1 Dryden made nu Longinus. He calls him, prefixed to The State of Innocenm, greatest critic among the Greeks after Aristotle," cites him often, and parades and uses a long passage of the Περι "ρψους in the Preface to Troilus and Cressida. The references are conveniently collected in Mr Ker's index (v. inf.)

2 Dryden's critical work, which until recently was accessible with ease only in Scott's elaborate edition of his works, or in Malone's less bulky, but

/l sulky and not excessively of the Prose, has recently been given, with quite admirable editorial matter, by Professor Ker (2 vols., Oxford, 1900). I wish he had included the Heads of an answer to Rymer ; but the authenticity of these is not absolutely certain, and the correct text still less so. See note on Rymer infra, and my edition of Scott, xv. 378 sq., for text and history. (There is a fair selection from Dryden in Loci Critici.)

114

DRYDEN AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES.

this is where, though Aristotle did not deny the fact, the whole

criticism of antiquity, except that of Longinus, and most of that

of modern times, swerves timorously from the truth), he knows

that this delight, this transport, counts first as a criterion.

Literature in general, poetry in particular, should, of course,

instruct; but it must delight.1

(The "blundering, half-witted people," as in one of his rare

bursts of not absolutely cool contempt2 he calls his own critics,

who charged him with plagiarising from foreign authors, entirely

missed these differences, which distinguish him from every

foreign critic of his day, and of most days for long afterwards.)

He may quote—partly out of that genuine humility and

generosity combined which make his literary character so

agreeable; partly from an innocent parade of learning. But

he never pays for what he borrows the slavish rent, or royalty,

of surrendering his actual and private judgment.

In the Preface to the Rival Ladies the poet-critic takes (as

indeed he afterwards fully acknowledged) a wrong line

—the defence of what he calls "verse" (that is to say, rhymed

heroic couplets, not blank verse) for play-writing. (This was his

mistress of the time; he rejoiced in her caresses, he wore her

colours, he fought for her beauty—the enjoyment authorising

the argument.) But as he has nothing to say that has not been

better said in the Essay,(we may

this.) There is one of the

excused to (and by) all but

which bad critics

are chiefly bound to avoid

title to existence—in his

addition that the dialogue

interesting sigh for an Academy (Dryden, let it be remembered,

1 Defence of an Essay of Dramatic Poesy. Scott, ed. cit., xi. 205; Ker,

i. 113.

2 Preface to Miscellanies, ii.; Scott,

ed. cit., xii. 295; Ker, i. 263. I wish

that Dryden were alive for many

reasons: not least because he would

certainly pay the debt that he owes to

my friend Mr Ker magnificentissime.

No one has vindicated him better

against the half-witted blunderers.

But I am not quite so much inclined as

even Mr Ker is to father his critical

style on Chapelain and La Mesnardière,

Sarrasin and Scudéry, or on Corneille

himself. It is not till Saint-Evremond,

perhaps even till Fénelon, that I can

find in French the indescribable omne

tulit punctum as in him. And both

are his inferiors.

was one of the earliest members of the Royal Society); and there

is the well-known and very amiable, though rather dangerous,

delusion that the excellence and dignity of rhyme were never

known till Mr Waller taught it, and that John Denham's

Cooper's Hill not only is, but ever will be, the exact standard of

good writing. But he knows Sidney and he knows Scaliger,

and he knows already that Shakespeare "had a larger soul of

poesy than any of our nation." And a man who knows these

three things in 1664 will go far.

The Preface to Annus Mirabilis1 is again submissive in

form, independent in spirit. Dryden obediently accepts the

prescription for epic or "Heroic" poetry, and though he makes

another slip of fact (or at least of term) by saying that

Chapman's Homer is written in "Alexandrines or verses of

six feet" instead of (as far as the Iliad is concerned) in the

fourteener, he is beautifully scholastic on the differences

between Virgil and Ovid, the Heroic and the Burlesque, "Wit

Writing" and "Wit Written." But he does it with uncon-

querable originality, the utterance of his own impression, his

own judgment, breaking through all this school-stuff at every

moment; and also with a valuable (though still inadequate)

account of "the Poet's imagination"2

Yet another point of interest is the avowed intention-(carried

out in the poem, to the disgust or at least distaste of Dr

Johnson) of using technical terms. This, one of the neo-

classic devices for attaining propriety, was, as we have seen,

excogitated in Italy, and warmly championed by the Pléiade;

but it had been by this time mostly abandoned, as it was

later by Dryden himself.

1 I have not thought it necessary to

encumber the page with references in

the case of the shorter Essays, where

any one can discover the passages

cited, whether he uses Scott, Malone,

the originals, or Mr Ker's special col-

lection, with no more labour than is

good for him and deserved by them.

In the case of the longer pieces the

references will be given at least suf-

ficiently often to make the locating

of the others easy, without turning

the lower part of the page into a kind

of arithmetical table.

2 As including Invention, Fancy, and

Elocution, but in itself merely con-

sidered as synonymous with "Wit."

It was probably from this that Addi-

son (see below) started that Imagina-

tion theory of his which has been so

much overrated.

116

DRYDEN AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES.

The Essay of Dramatic Poesy is much better known than

it was only two or three decades ago,1 and it is perhaps super-

The Essay of fluous to say that it is a dialogue in form, and that

Dramatic Poesy. the interlocutors are Dryden himself (Neander), his

brother-in-law Sir Robert Howard (Crites), Sir

Charles Sedley (Lisideius), and Lord Buckhurst (Eugenius).

(The two last, though at the time the wildest of scapegraces,

were men of distinct poetic gift and varied literary faculty.

And Howard, though no great poet, and possessing something

of the prig, the coxcomb, and the pedant in his composition,

was a man of some ability, of real learning of a kind, and

of very distinct devotion to literature.)

The Essay was first published in 1668, but had been written,

according to Dryden's statement in his Preface to Lord Buck-

Its setting hurst, "in the country" (at his father-in-law Lord

and overture. Berkshire's seat of Charlton near Malmesbury),

when the author was driven out of London by the Great

Plague three years before. He had, he says, altered some

of his opinions; but it did not much matter in an Essay

"where all I have said is problematical." The "Address to

the Reader" promises a second part dealing with Epic and

Lyric, which never appeared, and of which only the Epic part

is represented by later works. This is a pity, for while we

have treatises on Drama and Epic ad nauseam, their elder

and lovelier sister has been, "poor girl! neglected." It begins

with a picturesque setting, which represents the four inter-

locutors as having taken boat and shot the bridge, attracted by

the reverberation of the great battle with the Dutch in the

early part of June 1665, when Admiral Opdam's flag-ship was

1 When the present writer began

his revision of Scott's Dryden in the

year 1881 there were no separate

editions of the Essay since the orig-

inals. There are now, of annotated

issues of it, either by itself or with

more or less of its author's related

work, no less than five known to me,—

those of Mr Thomas Arnold (Oxford,

1886), Mr Strunk (New York, 1898),

Mr Low (London, n. d.), Mr Nichol

Smith (Glasgow, 1900), and Professor

Ker’s. The study of English litera-

ture in schools and colleges has been

much abused, very foolishly talked

about by some of its advocates, and

no doubt not always wisely directed.

But it is at least something to be

said for it that it has made such

a masterpiece as this known to prob-

ably a hundred persons for every

one who knew it thirty years ago.

blown up. Eugenius augurs victory from the gradual dying

away of the noise; and Crites observes (in character) that

he should like this victory better if he did not know how

many bad verses he should have to read on it. Lisideius adds

that he knows some poets who have got epinikía and funeral

elegies all ready for either event, and the dialogue proceeds

for some time in the same way of literary banter, especial

set being made at two poets (one of whom is certainly Wild,

while the other may be Flecknoe) with incidental sneers at

Wither(s) and Cleveland. At last Crites brings it to some-

thing like the quarrel of Ancient v. Modern. Eugenius picks

up the glove, but consents, at Crites’ suggestion, to limit the

discussion to dramatic poetry,1 and so the “dependence” is

settled.

Eugenius thinks that though modern plays are better than

Greek or Roman, yet those of “the last age” (1600–1660) are

Crites for. better than “ours.” As for epic and lyric, the last

the Ancients. age must yield. And all the quartette agree that

“the sweetness of English verse was never understood or

practised” by our fathers, and that some writers yet living

first taught us to mould our thoughts into easy and significant

words, to retrench the superfluities of expression, and to make

our rhyme so properly a part of the verse that it should never

mislead the sense. Lisideius having (with the consent of the

company, subject to a slight scholastic objection from Crites)

defined or described a play as “A just and lively image of

human nature, representing its passions and humours, and the

changes of fortune to which it is subject, for the delight and

instruction of mankind.” Crites takes up his brief for the

ancients. His speech is a set one, extolling the classical con-

ception of drama, and especially the modern-classical Unities,

1 One of the very earliest evidences

of the interest in dramatic criticism

felt in England, immediately after the

Restoration, must be Pepys’ note that

on September 1, 1660, when he was

dining at the Bullhead, there “rose

. . . a dispute between Mr Moore and

Dr Clerke—the former affirming that it

was essential to a tragedy to have the

argument of it true, which the Doctor

denied.” The question, on the very

English terms of another dinner and a

bet, was to be settled by Pepys himself

three days later. He does not tell us

whether he read up for it; but on the

4th he decided for the Doctor (Diary,

ed. Wheatley, i. 233).

but rather a panegyric than an argument, and particularly weak

in this—that it takes no critical account of the modern drama

at all. Except Ben Jonson, “the greatest man of the last age.”

not a single modern dramatic writer of any country is so much

as named.

Eugenius, though his discourse is livelier, falls into some-

thing the same fault, or at least the counterpart of it. He

Eugenius rallies the ancients unmercifully, and has very good

for the game of the stock plots and characters in Terence;

“last age.” but his commendation of the moderns has a dis-

appointing generality, and he lays himself rather open to the

good-humoured but forcible interruption of Crites that he and

Eugenius are never likely to come to an agreement, because

the one regards change as in itself an improvement, and the

other does not.

Still, Lisideius gives a new turn to the discussion by asking

Eugenius why he puts English plays above those of other

Lisideius for nations, and whether we ought not to submit our

the French. stage to the exactness of our next neighbours.

Eugenius in reply commits the further and especial defence of

the English to Neander, and Lisideius begins his part as

eulogist of the French. For some forty years, he says, we have

not had leisure to be good poets. The French have : and, by

Richelieu's patronage and Corneille's example, have raised their

theatre till it now surpasses ours, and the rest of Europe.

Who have kept the Unities so well? Who have avoided “that

absurd thing,” the English tragi-comedy, so completely ? In

tragedy they take well-known stories, and only manageable

parts of them, while Shakespeare crams the business of thirty

or forty years into two hours and a half. They make only one

person prominent, they do as much as possible behind the

scenes, keep dying off the stage altogether, and never end their

plays with a conversion, or simple change of will. Nobody,

with them, appears on the stage, unless he has some business

there : and as for the beauty of their rhyme, why, that is

“already partly received by us,” and it will, no doubt, when we

write better plays, “exceedingly beautify them.”

To him, Neander—that is to say—Dryden himself,

DRYDEN.

119

There is a reminder (though the matter is quite different) of

Daniel, and a comforting augury for English criticism, in the

Dryden for swift directness with which "the new critic" (as a

England and Webbe of his own day might have called him)

Liberty. strikes at the heart of the question. The French

are more regular, he grants, and our irregularities are, in some

cases, justly taxed. But, nevertheless, he is of opinion that

neither our faults nor their virtues are sufficient to place them

above us. For Lisideius himself has defined a play as a lively

imitation of nature. And these beauties of the French stage

are beauties, not natural, but thoroughly artificial. Before

Molière, where are the humours of French comedy, save,

perhaps, in Le Menteur and a few others? Elsewhere they

work in comedy only by the old way of quarrels and reconcilia-

tions, or by the conventions of Spanish intrigue-drama. "On

which lines there is not above one play to be writ: they are

too much alike to please often."

Then, as to tragi-comedy. What is the harm of this? why

should Lisideius "imagine the soul of man more heavy than his

senses?" The eye can pass, and pass with relief, from an

unpleasant to a pleasant object, in far less time than is re-

quired on the stage. He must have stronger arguments before

he concludes that compassion and mirth destroy each other:

and in the meantime he will hold that tragi-comedy is a more

pleasant way than was known to the ancients, or any moderns

who have eschewed it.

Next, and closely connected, as to single-plot v. plot+

underplot. Why is the former to be preferred to the latter?

Because it gives a greater advantage to the expression of

passion? Dryden can only say that he thinks "their" verse the

"coldest" he has ever read, and he supports this by a close and

pleasant beating-up-the-quarters of Cinna and Pompey, "not

so properly to be called plays as long discourses on reason

of state"; of Polyeucte, "as solemn as the long stops on an

organ," of their mighty tirades and récits. "Whereas in

tragedy it is unnatural for any one either to speak or listen

long, and in comedy quick repartee is the chiefest grace."

Yet again "they" are praised for making only one person con-

120

DRYDEN AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES.

siderable. Why? If variety is not mere confusion, is it not

always pleasing?1

The question of narrative against represented action is

treated with less boldness, and, therefore, with less success:

but he comes to the sound, if not very improving, conclusion

that, if we show too much action, the French show too little.

He has an interesting rebuke, however, here to Ben Jonson, for

reprehending "the incomparable Shakespeare."2 And he rises

again, and makes a capital point, by citing Corneille's own

confession of the cramping effect of the Unities, enlarging

whereon himself, he has an admirable exposure of the utterly

unnatural conditions which observance of these Unities brings

about. Then, after some remarks on prosody and the earlier

use of rhyme in English—remarks partly true, partly vitiated

by imperfect knowledge—he undertakes to produce plays as

regular as theirs and with more variety, instancing The Silent

Woman. Of this he is proceeding to a regular examen when

Eugenius requests a character of the author: and Neander, after

a little mannerly excuse, not only complies with this request,

but prefixes similar characters of Shakespeare and Fletcher.

(The first of these is universally, the second and third should

be pretty well known. It must be sufficient to say here that

Coda on

rhymed

plays, and

conclusion.

nothing like even the worst of the three (that of

Beaumont and Fletcher, which wants the adequacy

seen in English, and not many things in any other

language, while to this day, with all faults, the character of

Shakespeare is one of the apices of universal criticism. The

characters are followed by the examen—also admirable and

quite new in English, though with more pattern elsewhere.

And he ends with a short peroration, the keynote of which is,

"I ask no favour from the French." Lisideius is going to reply;

Crites interrupting, diverts the discussion to a particular

point already glanced at—the use of rhyme in plays. He (sen-

1

Here, to glance at the matter of

Dryden and the Spaniards (v. Hist.

Crit., ii. 331, 332, and inf., on Spence),

is a possible reminiscence of Lope's

Arte Nuevo, 178-180—

Que aquesta variedad deleytà mucho:

Buen exemplo nos dà naturaleza,

Que por tal variedad tiene belleza.

2

Scott, xv. 337 ; Ker, i. 75.

sibly enough) declines to investigate very carefully whether this

was a revival of the old English custom or an imitation of the

French, but attacks its legitimacy with the usual, obvious, and

fairly sound argument that since no man without premeditation

speaks in rhyme, he ought not to do it on the stage, anticipating

the retort, "neither does he speak blank verse" by urging that

this at any rate is "nearest nature" or less unnatural. Neander,

taking up the glove for "his new-loved mistress," practically

admits the weakness of his case by first advancing the very

argument as to blank verse which Crites has disallowed by

anticipation. The rest of his answer is a mixture of true and

not so true, of imperfect knowledge and ingenious argument,

constantly open to reply, but always interesting as a specimen

of critical advocacy. He represents himself as pursuing the

discourse so eagerly that Eugenius had to remind him that "the

boat stood still," and that they had come to their destination at

Somerset stairs. And with a pleasant final patch of description

the dialogue closes.

In reading it we should keep in mind what he says a quarter

of a century later to the same correspondent,1 that he was at this

Conspicuous time seeking his way "in a vast ocean" of criticism,

merits of without other help than the pole-star of the ancients,

the piece. and the rules of the French stage amongst the

moderns. He has given the readings of the pole-star to Crites,

and has pointed out the dangers of reckoning solely by it.

He has put into the mouth of Sedley (with a touch of malice

which that ingenious good-for-nothing must have noticed, and

which it is to his credit that he did not resent) a similar read-

ing of the bearings of the different French lights, and has

shown how little they assisted the English mariner—indeed,

how some of them actually led to rocks and quicksands, instead

of warning off from them. In the mouth of Buckhurst, and in

his own, he has put the patriotic apology, inclining it in the

former case towards laudation of the past, and in the latter to

defence of the present: and he has allowed divers excursions

from the immediate subject—especially that on "verse," or

rhymed heroics, as a dramatic medium. One of the chief of

1 In the Discourse on Satire. Scott, xiii. 3 ; Ker, ii. 17.

the many merits of the piece is precisely this, that at the time

Dryden had read less than at a later, and was less tempted to

add quotations or comments. He was following chiefly a very

safe guide—Corneille—and he bettered his guide's instruction.

It may be said boldly that, up to the date, nothing in the way of

set appreciation—no, not in Longinus himself—had appeared

equal to the three characters of Shakespeare, Jonson, and

Fletcher; while almost greater still is the constant application

of the “leaden rule,” the taking of book, author, kind as it is,

and judging it accordingly, instead of attempting to force every-

thing into agreement or disagreement with a prearranged

schedule of rules.

After the publication of the Essay of Dramatic Poesy, Dryden

(English literature can hardly give too many thanks for it) had

The Middle more than thirty well-filled years of life allowed

Prefaces. him; and to the very last, and at the very last,

criticism had its full share of his labours. The “Prefaces of

Dryden” never fail to give valuable matter; and we shall have

to notice most, if not all of them, though the notices may be of

varying length. The immediate successor and, in fact, appendix

to the Essay, the Defence thereof, was only printed in one edition,

the second, of The Indian Emperor, and is very far from being

of the best. Sir Robert Howard was, as has been said, a

man conceited and testy, as Shadwell's nickname for him in

The Sullen Lovers, Sir Positive Atall, hints. He seems to

have been nettled by his part of Crites, and replied with

some heat in a Preface to his own play, The Duke of Lerma.

Dryden, who never quite learned the wisdom of Bacon's

dictum, “Qui replicat multiplicat,” and who at this time

had not yet reached the easy disdain of his later manner,

riposted (1668) with more sense but with not much more temper.

The piece (which was practically withdrawn later) contained,

besides not too liberal asperities on Sir Robert's own work, a

further “defence of Rhyme,” not like Daniel's, where it should

be, but where it should not. It is redeemed by an occasional

admission, in Dryden's usual and invaluable manner, that he is

quite aware of the other side, and by an unhesitating assertion

of the primacy of Delight among the Objects of Poetry.

DRYDEN.

123

In none of the next three or four of the pieces do we find him quite at his best. For some few years, indeed, the popularity of his splendid, if sometimes a little fustianish, heroics, the profits of his connection with the theatre (which, added to other sources of revenue, made him almost a rich man in his way), and his association with the best society, seem to have slightly intoxicated him. He saw his error, like other wise men, all in good time, and even the error itself was not more than human and pardonable.

The Preface to An Evening's Love promises, but for the time postpones, an extension of the criticism of "the last age," and intersperses some valuable remarks on the difference between Comedy and Farce, between Wit and Humour, with a good deal of egotism and some downright arrogance.1 The Essay of Heroic Plays prefixed to The Conquest of Granada (1672) is as yet unconverted as to rhyme on the stage; but contains some interesting criticism of Davenant's essays in the kind, and a curious defence (recurred to later) of supernatural "machinery." The main gist of the Preface, besides its excuse of the extravagances of Almanzor, is an elaborate adjustment of the Heroic Play to the rules of the much-talked-of Heroic Poem. But though there is a good deal of self-sufficiency here, it is as nothing to the drift of the Epilogue to the second part of the play, and of an elaborate Prose "Defence" of this Epilogue. Here Dryden takes up the position that in "the last age," when men were dull and conversation low, Shakespeare and Fletcher had not, while Jonson did not avail himself of, access to that higher society which delighted to honour him, Dryden. Divers flings at the "solecisms," "flaws in sense," "mean writing," "lame plots," "carelessness," "luxuriance," "pedantry" of these poor creatures lead up to a statement that "Gentlemen will now be entertained with the foibles of each other." Never again do we find Dryden writing like this; and for his having done it at all Rochester's "Black

1 "I have further to add that I seldom use the wit and language of any romance or play which I undertake to alter ; because my own invention, as bad as it is, can furnish me with nothing so dull as what is there." But he makes ample amends by a bold challenge to the advocates of "the subject." "The story is the least part."

124

DRYDEN AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES.

Will with a cudgel" exacted sufficient, as suitable, atonement

in the Rose Alley ambuscade, even from the lowest point of

view. From a higher, he himself made an ample apology to

Shakespeare in the Prologue to Aurungzebe, and practically

never repeated the offence.

The curious State of Innocence (1677) (a much better thing

than rigid Miltonists admit) is preceded by an equally curious

Apology of Heroic Poetry, in which, yet once more, we find the

insufficient sense in which Imagination (here expressly limited

to "Imaging") was used; while the Preface to All for Love (1678)

is a very little ill-tempered towards an anonymous lampooner,

who was, in fact, Rochester. Troilus and Cressida (1679) was

ushered by a set preliminary Discourse on the Grounds of Criti-

cism in Tragedy. No piece illustrates more remarkably that

mixed mode of criticism in Dryden, to bring out which is our

chief design. On a canvas, not it must be confessed of much

interest, woven out of critical commonplaces from Aristotle and

Longinus down to Rymer and Le Bossu, he has embroidered a

great number of most valuable observations of his own, chiefly

on Shakespeare and Fletcher, which culminate in a set descrip-

tion of Fletcher as "a limb of Shakespeare"—a thing happy in

itself and productive of happy imitations since. The Preface to

the translation of Ovid's Epistles (1680) chiefly consists of a

fresh defence of that ingenious writer (for whom Dryden had no

small fancy), and the Dedication to Lord Haughton of The

Spanish Friar (1681) is mainly notable for an interesting con-

fession of Dryden's changes of opinion about Chapman and Du

Bartas (Sylvester rather), and a sort of apology for his own

dallying with these Delilahs of the theatre in the rants of

Almanzor and Maximin.

But that to the Second Miscellany, five years later, after a

period chiefly occupied with the great political satires, ranges

with the Essay, and not far below the Fables Preface, among

Dryden's critical masterpieces. The thing is not long—less

than twenty pages. But it gives a coherent and defensible, if

also disputable, theory of translation, a singularly acute, and, it

would appear, original contrast of the faire of Ovid and of Claud-

ian, more detailed studies of Virgil, Lucretius (singularly good)

DRYDEN.

125

Horace, and Theocritus, and the best critical stricture in English on “Pindaric” verse. After it the note of the

same year on Opera, which ushered Albion and Albanius, is of slight importance.

The Dedication of the Third Miscellany (specially named Examen Poeticum, as the second had been sub-titled Sylvæ)

contains some interesting protests against indiscriminate critical abuse, the final formulation of a saying sketched before (“the

corruption of a poet is the generation of a critic”), illustrated from Scaliger in the past and (not obscurely though not nomi-

natim) from Rymer in the present; and, among other things, some remarks on prosody which might well have been fuller.

Between this and the Fables, besides some lesser things,1

The Essay appearance of Dryden’s critical writings, the Essay on Satire [strictly Discourse] on Satire prefixed to the Juvenal,

and the the Dedication of the Æneis, with between them, Dedication the first writing at any length by a very distinguished

of the Englishman of letters, on the subject of pictorial art, Æneis. in the shape of the Parallel of Poetry and Painting prefixed to

the translation of Du Fresnoy De Arte Graphica. All, being Dryden’s, are, and could not but be, admirably written and full

of interest. But the Juvenal and Virgil Prefaces are, in respect of permanent value, both intrinsically and representatively injured

by an excess of critical erudition. The time was perhaps not yet ripe for an honest and candid address straight to the English

reader. The translator was bound to recommend himself to classical scholars by attention to the paraphernalia of what

then regarded itself as scholarship (“other brides, other par-

phernalia” no doubt), and to propitiate wits, and Templars, and the gentlemen of the Universities, with original or borrowed

discourses on literary history and principle. Dryden fell in with the practice, and obliged his readers with large decoctions

of Rigaltius and Casaubon, Dacier and Segrais, which are at any rate more palatable than the learned originals, but which

1 Lesser, but far from negligible; for and the critical biographies of Lucian

the Character of Saint-Evremond is both personally and critically interesting,

and Plutarch lead straight to Johnson.

126

DRYDEN AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES.

make us feel, rather ruefully, that boiling down such things was

not the work for which the author of Absalom and Achitophel

and of The Essay on Dramatic Poesy was born.

As for the Parallel, it is of course interesting as being nearly

our first Essay, and that by a master hand, in a kind of criticism

The Parallel which has later given excellent results. But Dryden,

of Poetry as he most frankly admits, did not know very much

and Painting. about the matter, and his work resolves itself very

mainly into a discussion of the principles of Imita-

tion in general, applied in an idealist manner to the two arts in

particular. Again we may say, "Not here, O Apollo!"

We have nothing left but the Preface to the Fables, the extra-

ordinary merit of which has been missed by no competent critic

The Preface from Johnson to Mr Ker.) The wonderful ease and

to the Fables. urbanity of it, the artfully varied forms of reply to

the onslaughts of Collier and others, are not more generally

agreeable than are, in a special division, the enthusiastic eulogy

of Chaucer (all the more entertaining because of its lack of

mere pedantic accuracy in places), and the interesting, if again

not always rigidly accurate, scraps of literary history. It winds

up, as the Essay had practically begun, a volume of critical

writing which, if not for pure, yet for applied, mixed, and sweet-

ened criticism, deserves to be put on the shelf—No capacious one

—reserved for the best criticism of the world.

We have seen, over and over again, in individual example;

have already partially summed more than once; and shall have

to re-sum with more extensive view later, the character and the

faults of the critical method which had been forming itself for

some hundred and fifty years when Dryden began his critical

work.) It would be absurd to pretend that he was entirely supe-

rior to this "Spirit of the Age"—which was also that of the age

behind him, and (with rare exceptions) of the age to

Dryden's come for nearly a hundred years. But, although it

general may be paradoxical, it is not absurd at all, to

critical express satisfaction that he was not so entirely

position. superior. He was enabled by his partial—and, in so far as his

consciousness went, quite sincere — orthodoxy, to obtain au

access to the general hearing in England, and even to influence,

iong after his death, important literary authorities, as he never

could have done if he had set up for an iconoclast. Further-

more, it was not yet time to break these idols. Apollo winked

at the neo-classical ignorance and heresy because it was useful.

We are so apt—so generously and excusably apt—to look at the

Miltons without considering the Clevelands, that we forget how

absolutely ungoverned, and in some cases how near to puerility,

the latest Elizabethan school was. We forget the slough of

shambling verse in which true poets, men like Suckling in

drama, men like Lovelace in lyric, complacently wallowed.

The strait waistcoat was almost necessary, even after the fine

madness, much more after the madness not so fine, of mid-

seventeenth-century verse, and, in a less degree, prose. And so,

when we find Dryden belittling the rhymes of Comus and

Lycidas,1 shaking his head over Shakespeare's carelessness, un-

able with Chapman, as Ben had been with Marlowe, to see the

fire for the smoke, we need not in the least excite ourselves any

more than when we find him dallying with the Dowsabels of

Renaissance school-criticism. In the first place, the thing had

to be done; and in the second place, his manner of doing it

went very far to supply antidote to all the bane, as well as to

administer the "corsives," as they said then, in the mildest

and most innocuous way possible.

Dryden's moly, an herb so powerful that—herein excelling

its original—it not only prevented men like Addison from be-

coming beasts like Rymer, but had the virtue of turning beasts

into men,—of replacing the neo-classic jargon by the pure lan-

guage of criticism,—was that plan of actual comparison and

examination of actual literature which is not merely the via

prima but the via sola of safety for the critic. By his time

there was assembled a really magnificent body of modern

His special letters, in addition to classical and mediæval. But

critical nobody in the late seventeenth century, except

method. Dryden, really utilised it. Italy and Spain were

sinking into premature senility. The French2 despised or

1 "In his Juvenilia . . . his rhyme

is always constrained or forced."—Dis-

course on Satire.

2 Chapelaîn might like the early ro-

mances (Hist. Crit., ii. 260). But here

Boileau was the spokesman of France.

128

DRYDEN AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES

ignored all modern literatures but their own, and despised and ignored almost equally their own rich and splendid mediæval stores.

Dryden's freedom from this worst and most hopeless vice is all the more interesting because, from some of his utterances, we might have expected him not to be free from it.

1

(That theory of his as to Mr Waller; that disastrous idea that Shakespeare and Fletcher were low people who had not the felicity to associate with gentlemen,—might seem likely to produce the most fatal results. But not so.)

He accepts Chaucer at once, rejoices in him, extols him, just as if Chaucer had taken lessons from Mr Waller, and had been familiar with my Lord Dorset.

Back his own side as he may in the duel of the theatres, he speaks of the great lights of the last age in such a fashion that no one has outgone him since.

He cannot really take an author in hand, be he Greek or Latin, Italian or French or English, without his superiority to rules and systems and classifications appearing at once, however he may, to please fashion and fools, drag these in as an afterthought, or rather (for Dryden never “drags” in anything save the indecency in his comedies) draw them into the conversation with his usual adroitness.

And he is constantly taking authors in hand in this way,—we are as certain that this, and not twaddling about unities and machines, was what he liked doing, as we are that he wrote comedies for money, and satires and criticism itself for love.

Now this,—“the critical reading without theory, or with theory postponed, of masses of different literatures, and the formation and expression of genuine judgment as to what the critic liked and disliked in them, not what he thought he ought to like and dislike,—this was what was wanted, and what nobody had yet done. Dryden did it—did it with such mastery of expression as would almost have commended a Rymer, but with such genuine critical power and sympathy as would almost have

1

They have deceived the very elect, e.g., M. Rigault, who in not altogether unnatural amazement at the dictum, “Spenser wanted only to have read the rules of Bossu,” classes (Q. des A. et des M., p. 311) Dryden as an ancien

enragé. But M. Rigault is at a wrong angle in most of the English part of his book,—so much so as to strike a chill into any one who has to criticise a foreign literature, lest, lacking the grace of the Muses, he too go astray

carried off the absence of merits of expression altogether. He established (let us hope for all time) the English fashion of criticising, as Shakespeare did the English fashion of dramatising,—the fashion of aiming at delight, at truth, at justice, at nature, at poetry, and letting the rules take care of themselves.

Perhaps in no single instance of critical authorship and authority does the great method of comparison assist us so Dryden and well as in the case of Dryden and Boileau. This comparison is absolutely fair. The two were almost exact contemporaries ; they represented—so far at least as their expressed and, in both cases, no doubt conscientious, literary creed went—the same sect. Enfin Malherbe vint is an exact parallel, whether as a wonderful discovery or a partly mischievous delusion, to the exploits on our numbers by Mr Waller.

Both were extremely powerful satirists. Both, though not comparable in intrinsic merit, were among the chief men of letters of their respective countries. Both had a real, and not merely a professional or affected, devotion to literature. Both applied, with whatever difference of exclusiveness and animus, a peculiar literary discipline, new to the country of each. And in the case of both—it has been decided by a consensus of the best judges, with all the facts before them up to the present time—there was an insufficient looking before and after, a pretension to limit literature to certain special developments.

The defects of Boileau in carrying out the scheme are worth contrasting with the merits of Dryden.1

That, though he makes mistakes enough in literary history, these mistakes are slight in comparison with Boileau's, matters not very much; that, though his satiric touch was more withering even than the Frenchman's, he has no love of lashing merely for the sport, and never indulges in insolent flings at harmless dulness, suffering poverty, or irregular genius ; that, though quite prone enough to flatter, he declined to bow the knee to William of Orange, while Boileau persistently grovelled at the feet of William's enemy,—these things matter even less to

1 For a very full account of Boileau see Hist. Crit., ii. 280-300.

130

DRYDEN AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES.

us. The fact, the critical fact, remains that the faults of his

time and his theory did the least harm to Dryden of all men

whom we know, while they did the most to Boileau. And the

reason of the fact is more valuable than the fact itself. Boileau,

beyond controversy, has left us not a single impartial and appre-

ciative criticism of a single author, ancient or modern. Dryden

simply cannot find himself in presence of a man of real genius,

whether he belongs to his own school or another, without

having his critical lips at once touched by Apollo and Pallas.

He was sadly ignorant about Chaucer,—a board-school child

might take him to task; but he has written about Chaucer with

far more real light and sympathy than some at least of the

authors of the books from which the board-school child derives

its knowledge have shown. His theory about Shakespeare,

Fletcher, and Jonson was defective; but he has left us criticisms

of all three than which we have, and are likely to have, no

better. About the ancients he borrows from both ancients and

moderns; but it is remarkable that while Boileau's borrowings

are his best, Dryden's are infinitely his worst part. So the

consequence is that while Boileau is merely a point de repère, a

historical document which men simply strive to bring to some

relation with the present and the future, Dryden is and will

remain at once a source and a model for ever. And he is these

because he had the wisdom to ask himself the question, “Do I

think this good or bad?” and the wit to answer it, instead of

asking and answering the other, “Is it good or bad according

to this or that scheme and schedule?”

We have, in short, in Dryden the first very considerable

example in England, if not anywhere, of the critic who, while

possessing fairly wide knowledge of literature, attributes no

arbitrary or conventional eminence to certain parts of it, but at

least endeavours to consider it as a whole; of the critic who is

never afraid to say “Why?”; of the critic who asks, not whether

he ought to like such and such a thing, but whether he does

like it, and why he likes it, and whether there is any real reason

why he should not like it; of the critic, finally, who tries, with-

out prepossession or convention, to get a general grasp of the

book or author, and then to set forth that grasp in luminous

language, and with a fair display of supporting analysis and

argument. Dryden, of course, is far—very far—from being a

faultless monster of criticism. The application of his own pro-

cess to his own theory will discover in it many mistakes, inde-

pendent of the imperfect knowledge which has been already

admitted, of the inconsistencies which are more of a virtue than

of a defect, and of the concessions to tradition and fashion which

are almost wholly unfortunate. Nay, more, it may be granted

that Dryden did not escape the dangers of the process itself, the

dangers of vagueness, of desultoriness, of dilettantism. But he

has the root of the matter in him. He knows that art exists to

give pleasure, and when he says “I am pleased with this,” he

insists on strong reasons being given to show that he ought not

to be so. He admits also—nay, insists on—nature, variety, in-

dividuality. He will “connoisseur no man out of his senses,” 1

and refuses to be so connoisseured by any, while he will give

good reasons for his own and others’ pleasure. These are the

marks of the true and catholic criticism ; and Dryden has

them. √

Let us pass from him directly to one who has them not.

There are few English critics who require to be dealt with at

Rymer. once more carefully and more faithfully than does

Thomas Rymer. He has become a name, and to become a name is to be at least on the way to becoming a

legend, if not a myth. Moreover, as his legend is (for good

reasons) far from a favourable one, it has been made more

legendary by those generous or wayward revolts against it

which are not uncommon. It has even been held proper, for

some time, to shake the head of deprecation over Macaulay’s

“the worst critic that ever lived.” Moreover, Rymer is by no

means very accessible—in his critical works, of course, for we

speak not here of the Fœdera. Whether these were originally

published in very small numbers; whether the common-sense

of mankind rose against them and subjected them in unusual

proportions to the “martyrdom of pies”; or whether (by one of

Time’s humourous revenges) the copies have been absorbed into

special collections relating to that altissimo poeta whom Rymer

1 A phrase of Blake's.

132

DRYDEN AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES.

blasphemed, I cannot say. But it is certain that very good

libraries often possess either none or only a part of them, and

that on the rare occasions on which they appear in catalogues

they are priced at about as many pounds as they are intrinsic-

ally worth farthings.1 I think I have seen notices of Rymer

which evidently confused The Tragedies of the Last Age (1678)

with A Short View of Tragedy (1693). Besides these two,

Rymer, independently of smaller things and reissues, had pro-

duced, earlier than the earlier, in 1674, a preface to his own

translation of Rapin's Reflections, which completes the trinity

of his important criticism. No one of the three is long; in fact,

The Tragedies of the Last Age is a very tiny book, which, short

as it is, seems to have exhausted the author before he could

carry out half his scheme.

A careful and comparative reading of all three has given me

a settled, and I think a just, conception of Rymer as of a man

of remarkable learning for his age and country, but intensely

stupid to begin with, and Puck-led by the Zeitgeist into a

charcoal-burner's faith in "the rules." In the Preface2 he is

less crabbed than in the two booklets; and, though he already

The Preface uses the would-be humorous hail-fellow-well-met

to Rapin. colloquialism characteristic of the lower Restoration

style, and employed even by such a man of letters as L'Estrange

and such scholars as Collier and Bentley, he does not push it to

the same lengths of clumsy ass-play as later. He thinks that

"poets would grow negligent if Critics had not a strict eye

1 Parts, but parts only, are given

in Mr Spingarn's extremely useful

Critical Essays of the 17th Century (3

vols. : Oxford, 1908-9), which takes up

the ball from Professor Gregory Smith's

collection, and will illustrate this and

part of the last and next chapters

with texts. I do not think Mr Spin-

garn very happy in his attempts to

"whitewash" Rymer and others; but

the student can easily judge for himself.

2 Vol. ii. pp. 107-130 of the 1706

edition of Rapin in English. At p.

113 Rymer says that he will not here

examine the various qualities which

make English fit above all other

languages for Heroic Poesy, "the

world expecting these matters learn-

edly and largely discussed in a par-

ticular treatise on the subject." This

apparently important announcement is

marginally annotated "Sheringham."

I presume this was Robert S., a Nor-

folk man (as his name imports), of

Caius College, and Proctor at Cam-

bridge just before the Commonwealth

ejection. I suppose the world was

disappointed of this work by his sud-

den death in May 1678, four years

after Rymer wrote.

on their miscarriages," yet he admits that this eye sometimes squints, and compares some critics to "Wasps that rather annoy the Bees than terrify the drones." Then he skins the past, noticing Castelvetro, Malherbe, and others, but thinks that till lately "England was as free from Critics as from Wolves," Ben Jonson having all the critical learning to himself. After praise of Aristotle and a short notice of his actual author, he then proceeds to consider the history of English poetry independently. As for Chaucer, "our language was not then capable of any heroic character," nor indeed was the most polite wit of Europe "sufficient for a great design." Spenser had "a large spirit, a sharp judgment, and a genius for Heroic poetry perhaps above any that ever wrote since Virgil," but "wanted a true idea," and was misled by Ariosto. "They who can love Ariosto will be ravished with Spenser, but men of juster thoughts," &c. His stanza is "nowise proper for our language."

Davenant and Cowley are criticised with politeness, but not very favourably; the faults of both, as well as their designs, were what Rymer was capable of understanding, and neither provokes him to any rudeness on the one hand or stupidity on the other, though there is an occasional ripple betraying an undercurrent of asperity. Then, after some more general remarks, he takes the accepted test of the Description of Night, and applies it with mixed commendation to Apollonius Rhodius, with rather independent criticism to Virgil, slightly to Ariosto, and rather cavillingly to Tasso, with a good deal of censure to Marino, and with more to Chapelain, with about as much to Père Le Moyne, and then with very considerable praise to that passage of Dryden's in the Conquest of Mexico to which Wordsworth was afterwards nearly as unjust as Rymer himself to far greater things.1 And with this rather patronising "Well done our side!" he stops.

Had Rymer done nothing more than this in criticism it would indeed be absurd to call him our best critic, but it would be still more absurd to call him our worst. There is fair know-

1 I do not think that Rymer ever intended to be rude to Dryden, though his clumsy allusions to "Bays" in the Short View naturally rubbed the discrowned Laureate the wrong way for a time.

134

DRYDEN AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES.

ledge, there is fair common-sense judgment; the remarks on

Chaucer are merely what might be expected, and on Spenser

rather better than might be expected; the detailed censure is

correct enough; and though there cannot be said to be any

great appreciation of poetry, there is interest in it. Above all,

if the piece stood alone, we should hardly think of detecting in

it even a murmur of the pedantic snarl which is the one un-

pardonable sin of a critic.

In The Tragedies of the Last Age Rymer ruit in pejus. He

had, in the interval, received some praise, which is always bad

The Tra- for an ill-conditioned man and dangerous for a

gedies of the stupid one; he had conceived the idea of being

Last Age. bee as well as wasp; and he undertook to show

Beaumont and Fletcher, Shakespeare and Jonson, their errors,

though as matter of fact he lost his wind in belabouring the

twins, and had to leave the others till he had taken fifteen

years' breath. He shows himself at once in a mood of facetious

truculence and self-importance. He is not going to emulate

"the Remarks and eternal triflings of French Grammaticasters."

But he is going to set the "quibble-catching" of his country-

men right, and to put an end to "the Stage-quacks and Em-

pirics in poetry" who despise the rules. "Fancy leaps and

frisks, and away she's gone; while Reason rattles the chain, and

follows after," in which flight Rymer, as often, does not seem to

perceive that he is not exactly giving Reason and himself

the beau rôle. Then he sets to work on three plays of

Beaumont and Fletcher. In Rollo there is nothing to move

pity and terror, nothing to delight, nothing to instruct.1 In A

King and No King Panthea actually suggests kissing!2 Arbaces

is so bad that he really made Rymer think of Cassius—a wither-

ing observation which foretells what the critic was going to

say about Shakespeare, though on this occasion he was too ex-

hausted to say it.

1 Rymer's elaborate directions for removing the Romantic offence of this play, and adjusting it to Classical correctness and decorum, are among the most involuntarily funny things in criticism (pp. 19-24).

2 Rymer knew something of Old French. How horrified he would have been if he had come across the lines in Florissant et Florete (2904, 2905)—

"Si samble qu' enfès voit disant

'Baise, baise, je voil baisier !'

He said it fifteen years later with no uncertain voice. The

one redeeming feature of the Short View is its remarkable, if

The Short not quite impeccable, learning. Rymer really knows

View of something about "Provencial" poetry, though he

Tragedy. confuses it (and thereby made Dryden confuse it)

with old French, and actually regards Philippe Mouskès—not

even a Frenchman but a Fleming—as a "troubadour." Still, his

knowledge is to be praised, and his ignorance forgiven. Less

forgivable, but still not fatal, are the singular want of method

with which he flings the result of his learning, pell-mell with

his own remarks, on the reader, and (in a yet further degree of

culpability) the vulgar jeering of his style. But all this might

still pass. His mistakes are much less, and his knowledge

much greater, than those of any critic of his age. Others have

lacked method; and Bentley was quite, Collier very nearly, as

coarsely rude. On some general points, such as the utility of

the chorus in keeping playwrights to the rules, he is not un-

intelligent. He is a great admirer of dumb-show, and thinks

that many of the tragical scenes, not merely in Shakespeare, but

in Jonson, would go better without words.

More than half the little book 1 is occupied with a display of

his learning—first in some general remarks on the drama, and

then in a history of it which is, with all its mistakes, better in-

formed than anything of the kind earlier. And then Rymer

falls on Othello. He grants it "a phantom of a fable." But it

is a very bad phantom. Ridiculous that Desdemona should

love a blackamoor at all; more ridiculous that she should be

attracted by his stories of adventure; most that Othello should

be made a Venetian general—and so on throughout. But the

characters are worse. Rymer simply cannot away with Iago;

and this on grounds exquisitely characteristic, not merely of

him but of the whole system, of which he is the reductio ad ab-

surdum. It is not nearly so much Iago's theriotes by which

Rymer is shocked, as his violation of the type and the general

1 It has (excluding an appended extract from the Registers of the Parlia-

ment of Paris about Mysteries) only 168 pages of perhaps 200 words each;

and much of it is quotation. But it is far longer than The Tragedies of the

Last Age.

136

DRYDEN AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES.

law. "He would pass upon us a close, dissembling, false, insinuating rascal instead of an open-hearted, frank, plain-dealing

soldier-a character constantly worn by them for some thousand

years in the world."1 Again, "Philosophy tells us it is a

principle in the nature of Man to be grateful. . . . Philosophy

must be [the poet's] guide,"2 therefore Iago is a poetical impossibility. Rymer knows that historically all men are not grate-

ful : but never mind. The Type ! the Type ! the Type !3 One

need hardly go farther, but in going we cannot, in one sense,

fare worse.4 "Godlike Romans" (as Mr Dryden had already

called them) are, in Julius Cæsar, "put in fools' coats and made

jack-puddings of," which, says Tom justly, "is a sacriledge."

Brutus and Cassius "play a prize, a tryal of skill in huffing and

swaggering like two drunken Hectors." In Tragedy Shake-

speare "appears quite out of his element; his brains are

turned; he raves and rambles without any coherance, any

spark of reason, or any rule to control him, and set bounds to

his frenzy." Nor does Ben fare much better. He indeed

"knew to distinguish men and manners at another rate." In

Catiline "we find ourselves in Europe, we are no longer in the

land of Savages," sighs Rymer with relief. Still Ben, too,

"gropes in the dark, and jumbles things together without

head and tail;" he, though not "in the gang of the strolling

fraternity," like Shakespeare, "must lie a miserable heap of

ruins for want of architecture;" he "sins against the clearest

light and conviction" by "interlarding fiddle-faddle comedy

and apocryphal matters." And so forth.

That Rymer was utterly deaf to the poetry of Othello

1 Short View, p. 94.

2 Ibid., p. 144.

3 Rymer has been defended as an

apostle of "Common Sense." But

this is sheer nonsense.

4 It may be not unamusing to give

an instance or two of the way in which

Nemesis has made poor Tom speak

truth unconsciously.—

"They who like this author's writing

will not be offended to find so much

repeated from him" [Shakespeare].—

P. 108.

"Never in the world had any pagan

Poet his brains turned at this mon-

strous rate."—P. 111.

"No Pagan poet but would have

found some machine for her deliver-

ance."—P. 134.

"Portia is . . . scarce one remove

from a Natural. She is the own

cousin-german . . . with Desde-

mona."—P. 156.

and of Julius Cæsar, that he thinks "the neighing of a horse

The Rule or the howling of a mastiff possesses more meaning"

of Tom than Shakespeare's verse, merely demonstrates that

the Second. he understood the language of the beasts and did not

understand that of the man. It disqualifies him for his busi-

ness, no doubt, hopelessly and of itself. But in the nature of

the case we cannot quarrel with him for this Judgment of God;

and, on his own theory, mere poetry is of so little consequence

that it does not much matter. But where he is cast hopelessly

on his own pleadings, where he shows himself (as he has been

called) utterly stupid, is in his inability to understand the fable,

the characters themselves. He cannot see that the very points

which he blunderingly picks out are the adunata pithana of his

own law-giver — the improbabilities or impossibilities made

plausible by the poet's art; and that the excess of this or

that quality in Iago, in Desdemona, in Othello, is utterly lost

in, or is unerringly adjusted to, their perfect humanity. He is

not bound to feel "the pity of it"—which he quotes, much as

the pig might grunt at the pearl. But he is bound, on Aris-

totelian, no less than on the most extreme Romantic, principles,

to feel that universality which Dryden had ascribed a quarter

of a century before, and for all time to come. Therefore, for

once, though no Macaulayan, I venture to indorse my unim-

portant name on a dictum of Macaulay's. I have read several

critics — I trust this book may show sufficiently that this

is no idle boast. I have known several bad critics from Ful-

gentius to the Abbé d'Aubignac, and from Zoilus to persons of

our own day, whom it is unnecessary to mention. But I never

came across a worse critic than Thomas Rymer.1

Between its King and its Helot, our Sparta of the last forty

years of the seventeenth century does not offer many persons

for exornation, with crown or with stripe, as the case may be.

1 His best deed was to elicit from Dryden, in Heads of an Answer to Rymer (Works, xv. 390), the memorable observation that "if Aristotle had seen ours [i.e., "our plays"] he might have changed his mind." One may add that, if Dryden had worked these

"Heads" out, he might have solved the whole mystery of criticism as far as in all probability it ever can be solved, or at the very least as far as it could be solved with the knowledge of literature at his disposal. (The most notable of them are in Loci Critici.)

138

DRYDEN AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES.

Sprat in the famous passage of his History of the Royal Society; Phillips and Winstanley and Langbaine in their attempts at literary history ; Sir Thomas Pope Blount in his other attempt at a critical summary of literature; Collier in his moral chevauchées against the ethical corruption of the Drama,—these we may legitimately notice, but at no great length. Dennis, Gildon, and Bysshe will come better in the next Book; and it is hoped that no reader will be so insatiable as to demand the inclusion of Milbourn or of Hiceringill.

The Sprat passage 1 is of the very first importance in the History of English Literature, and has at last been recognised as being so. In it the gorgeous, floriated, conceited style of the earlier century is solemnly denounced, and a “ naked natural style of writing ” enjoined. But Sprat is careful to point out that this was for the purposes of the Society —for the improvement not of literature but of science; and he does not attempt to argue it out at all from the literary side. The pronouncement expresses the whole sense of the time; it is epoch-making in the history of literary taste; but it does not give itself out as literary criticism, though the spirit of it may be seen in half the literary criticism that follows for nearly a hundred and fifty years.

The infant historians 2 also may be pretty briefly despatched. Edward Phillips, Milton’s nephew, was by all accounts a most respectable person; and considering the prevalence of Royalist opinions (especially as he shared them), he says quite as much about his uncle as could be expected. Besides, it is just possible that Milton was no more engaging as an uncle and schoolmaster than he was as a husband and father. He was not alive when Theatrum Poetarum 3 appeared in the winter of 1674-75, but the dignity of the opening “ Discourse of

1 History of the Royal Society, 4to, London, 1667, p. 111 sq. It may be found conveniently extracted at vol. iii. pp. 271, 272 of Sir Henry Craik’s English Prose Selections (London, 1894).

2 It is well known that Thomas Heywood, the dramatist, had planned, if he did not actually execute, a Lives

of the Poets very much earlier, and some sanguine souls have hoped that it may yet turn up. But the famous passage about poets’ nicknames, as well as the whole cast of Heywood’s work, suggests that, though biography may have lost something, criticism has not lost much.

3 London, 12mo.

the Poets and Poetry in general " has made some think that he

had had a hand in it. I am not so sure of this. That it is

addressed to Thomas Stanley and Sir Edward Sherburne (each,

for all the learning of the former and the literary merits of

both, among those " rhyming amorists " and Cavaliers whom

Milton certainly disliked, and at least affected to disdain) need

not much matter. But the style, though often ambitious, does

not seem to me above the reach of a man of some learning and

moderate ability, who had been about Milton in his youth for

years, and at intervals afterwards. Such a man would naturally

take the noble-sentiment view of Poetry, talk of the melior

natura and " that noble thing education," and the like; nor

would he be at a loss for Miltonic precedents of another kind

when he felt inclined to speak of " every single-sheeted pie-

His corner poet who comes squirting out an Elegy." The

Theatrum Poetarum piece is creditable as a whole, and ends with a hesi-

tating attribution of poetic merit to Spenser and

Shakespeare, in spite of the " rustic obsolete words," the " rough-

hewn clowterly verse " of the one, and the " unfiled expressions,

the rambling and undigested fancies " of the other. The body

of the book--an alphabetical dictionary, first of ancient then of

modern poets, and lastly of poetesses, alphabetically arranged in

a singularly awkward fashion by their prœnomina or Christian

names when Phillips knows these, and by others when he does

not--is much less important. Here again the nephew has been

robbed to give to the uncle the notices of Marlowe and Shake-

speare, in both of which the most noticeable expressions, " Clean

and unsophisticated wit " and " unvulgar style," apply to Shake-

speare himself. Phillips has undoubted credit for appreciation

of Drummond (whom he had partially edited from the papers

of Scot of Scotstarvit many years earlier) and for singling out

from the work of Wither (which was then a by-word with

Cavalier critics) The Shepherd's Hunting for admiration. But

he is much more of a list-maker than of a critic.

William Winstanley (who brought out his Lives of the Most

Famous English Poets 1 in some dozen years later, and levied con-

tributions on Phillips himself in the most nonchalant manner)

1 8vo, London, 1686.

140

DRYDEN AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES.

was a mere bookmaker, to whom is assigned the post of

Winstanley's manufacturer for years of “Poor Robin's Almanack,”

Lives. and who did other hack-work. His book is chiefly

an unmethodical compilation of anecdotes; and as the lives

of men of letters have always had more attraction than their

works, Winstanley has been found readable. His place here

is simply due to the fact that, putting archaics like Bale and

Pits aside, he is the second English Historian of Poets, if not

of Poetry.

In connection with Phillips and Winstanley (whom he

avowedly follows and acidly comments, accusing them at the

Langbaine's same time of having stolen his thunder from a pre-

Dramatic viously published Catalogue) it may be well to notice

Poets. Gerard Langbaine, the somewhat famous author of

the Account of the English Dramatic Poets.1 Of real criticism

there is hardly even as much in Langbaine as in his two Esaüs

or Jacobs, taking it which way you please. But he is the

spiritual ancestor of too many later critics; and there are still

too many people who confuse his method with that of criticism

for him to be quite left out. That he had a particular animosity

to Dryden2 is less to his discredit than to that of the class to

which he belongs. This kind of parasite usually fastens on the

fattest and fairest bodies presented to it. Langbaine is first of

all a Quellenforscher. Having some reading and a good memory,

he discovers that poets do not as a rule invent their matter, and

it seems to him a kind of victory over them to point out where

they got it. As a mere point of literary history there is of course

nothing to object to in this: it is sometimes interesting, and need

never be offensive. But, as a matter of fact, it too often is made so,

and is always made so in Langbaine. “I must take the freedom

to tell our author that most part of the language is stolen.”

“Had Mr W. put on his spectacles he would have found it

printed thus,” &c., &c. This hole-picking generally turns to

hole-forging; and one is not surprised to find Langbaine, after

1 1691: but pirated earlier.

2 I do not know whether this was

cause or consequence of his being a

friend of Shadwell. But I am bound

to note, though with much surprise,

that my friend Sir Sidney Lee finds

(D. N. B.) “no malice” in Langbaine.

LANGBAINE—TEMPLE—BENTLEY.

141

quoting at great length Dryden's cavillings at the men of

the last age, huddling off as "some praises" the magnificent

and immortal eulogies 1 which atone for them. I am afraid that

Dante, if he had known Langbaine, would have arranged a

special bolgia for him; and it would not have lacked later

inhabitants.

The only too notorious quarrel of the Ancients and Moderns

produced some deservedly famous literature of the critical kind

Temple. in England, but its greatest result in that way, The

Battle of the Books, will be best noticed, together

with its author's other works, and in the order rather of its own

publication than of its composition. Nor need the earlier prot-

agonists, Temple and Bentley, occupy us much; though the

latter will give an opportunity of paying at least respects to a

kind of Criticism of which we have perforce said little. Temple,

Essay on Poetry, of one of the most exquisite sentences in

English, is simply a critic pour rire. The hundred pages of

his Works,2 which are devoted to literature, invited the exercise

of Macaulay's favourite methods by the enormity of their ignor-

ance, the complacency of their dogmatism, and the blandness

of their superficiality. Temple has glimmerings—he intimates

pretty plainly some contempt of at least the French "rules";

but he will still be talking of what he has given himself hardly

the slightest pains to know.

This could not be said of Bentley, and the Phalaris Disser-

Bentley. tation has been not undeservedly ranked as one of the repre-

sentative pieces of critical literature. It is only

unfortunate that Bentley has meddled so little with

the purely literary side of the matter; and the sense of this mis-

fortune may be tempered by remembrance of his dealings with

1 This is the odder, and the more

discreditable, because one of the few

things to be counted to Langbaine for

righteousness is a distinct admiration

of Shakespeare.

2 Ed. 1757, vol. iii., pp. 394-501,

containing the Poetry, the Ancient and

Modern Learning, and the Thoughts

upon Reviewing that Essay. Some

have charitably found in Temple

better knowledge of the Moderns,

whom he scorned, than of the An-

cients, whom he championed, on

the strength of his references to

"Runes" and "Gothic Dithyrambics."

I cannot be so amiable. It is all a

mere parade of pretentious sciolism

varnished by style.

142

DRYDEN AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES.

Milton. He is, however, perfectly right in at least hinting1 that the Pseudo-Phalaris might have been convicted on literary counts, as well as on linguistic and chronological, and that, on grounds of style, the theory of those half-sceptics who attributed the Letters to Lucian was almost worse than the error of the true believers. That Lucian could have written a line of this skimbleskamble stuff is simply impossible; and it must always remain an instance of the slight sense of style possessed by the Humanists that a really great man of letters, like Politian, should have given countenance to the absurdity.

From any point of critical consideration Collier's famous book2 must be a most important document in the History of Collier's Criticism; and though from some such points it may be of even greater importance than it is to us, we can in no wise omit it. For it is probably the earliest instance in our history where a piece of criticism has apparently changed, to a very great extent, the face of an important department of literature, and has really had no small part in bringing about this change. It is, however, indirectly rather than directly that it concerns us; for it is only here and there that Collier takes the literary way of attack, and in that way he is not always, though he is sometimes, happy. Curiously enough, one of his felicities in this kind has been imputed to him for foolishness by his great panegyrist. It is not necessary to feel that sympathy with his opinions on ecclesiastical and political affairs which Macaulay naturally disclaimed, and which some others may cheerfully avow, in order to see that the Tory critic was quite right, and the Whig critic quite wrong, in regard to the dissertations on the Greek and Latin Drama. What may be thought of their technical scholarship does not matter. But Macaulay's undoubted familiarity with

1 Diss., § xvi. My copy is the London ed. of 1817.

2 A Short View of the Profaneness and Immorality of the English Stage. London, 1698. The great popularity of the book caused it to be quickly reprinted: my copy, though of the first year, is the third edition. Collier's

rejoinder to his victims next year contains good things, but is of less importance. And it does not matter much to us whether he originally drew anything from the Prince de Conti's pietist Traité sur la Comédie (1667); The Ancients, and the Fathers, and the Puritans were in any case quite sufficient sources.

the classics must have had a gap in it, and his wide knowledge

of modern literature several much greater gaps, if he did not

know—first, that Collier had ancient criticism on his side, and

secondly, that the allegation of ancient authority and practice

where favourable, the arguing-off of it where inconvenient,

were exactly the things to influence his generation. When

everybody was looking back on the Vossian precept, "Imitate

the Ancients, but imitate them only in what is good," and

drawing forward to the Popean axiom,

"To copy Nature is to copy them,"

"dissertations on the Greek and Latin Drama" were not otiose

at all, they were absolutely necessary.

But for the most part, as is notorious, Collier is as ethical as

Plutarch or Plato. It was desirable that he should be so, and

nobody but a paradoxer will ever defend the style of play-writ-

ing which produced such things as Limberham, and The Old

Bachelor, and even The Relapse—though the first be Dryden's,

and contain some good things in the characters of Prudence and

Brainsick, though the second show us the dawn of Congreve's

wit, and though the third contain handfuls of the sprightliest

things in the English language. It is in reference to this last,

by the way, that Collier chiefly quits the path of ethical criti-

cism, and takes to that of literary, or at least dramatic. There

is hardly a sharper and more well-deserved beating-up of the

quarters of a ragged dramatic regiment anywhere than that (at

p. 212 sq.) on the glaring improbabilities of Vanbrugh's plot, the

absolute want of connection between the title part of it and the

real fable—Tom Fashion's cheating his brother of Hoyden—and

the way in which the characters are constantly out of character

in order that the author may say clever things. But Collier

has serious matters on his mind too much to give us a great deal

of this ; and the other definitely literary points which I have

noted, in a very careful re-reading of the piece for this book, are

not numerous. I wish he had not called Love's Labour's Lost (p.

125. "a very silly play"; but how many people were there

then living who would have thought differently? I wish he

had worked out his statement (rather rash from his own point

144

DRYDEN AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES.

of view) at p. 148, “ Poets are not always exactly in rule.” He

might have developed his views on the Chorus (p. 150) interest-

ingly. I have some other places; but they are not important.

The sum is, that though Collier evidently knew most critical

authorities, from Aristotle and Horace, through Heinsius and

Jonson, to Rapin, and Rymer, and Dryden himself, very well;

though he could (pp. 228, 229) state the Unities, and even argue

for them—this was not his present purpose, which was simply

to cleanse the stage. His interest in other matters in fact

blunted what might have been a keen interest in literature

proper. And this is thoroughly confirmed by study of his

interesting and characteristic Essays,1 where, out of more than

five hundred pages, exactly four are devoted to literature, and

these give us nothing but generalities.

That Collier's victory was very mainly due to the fact that

he struck in at the right moment, as spokesman of an already

Sir T. P. formed popular opinion, would be a matter of reason-

Blount. able certainty in any case ; but the certainty is here

historical. One of many proofs at hand is in the curious lighter-

full of critical lumber which Sir Thomas Pope Blount launched

four (or eight?) years before Collier let his fishyip drive into

the fleet of the naughty playwrights. In this book,2 dedicated

to Mulgrave, that noble poet himself, Roscommon, Cowley, and

the lately published and immensely influential Whole Duty of

Man, are quoted to support the argument that “ A poet may

write upon the subject of Love, but he must avoid obscenity.”3

Sir Thomas, however, comes within the inner, and not merely

the outer, circle of criticism for his aims and his collections,

though certainly not for any critical genius that he displays.

1 Essays upon Several Moral Subjects (3rd ed., 2 vols., London, 1698). Nor

can one make out an entirely good case (though something may be done)

for Collier in the matter of that de-

scription of Shakespeare, which Mr

Browning has maliciously chosen, as a

motto for Ferishtah's Fancies, from the

Historical Dictionary : “ His genius

was jocular, but, when disposed, he

could be very serious.”

2 De Re Poetica, or Remarks upon Poetry, &c., 4to, London, 1694. It is

even said to have first appeared in 1690.

3 Both Roscommon and Mulgrave were critics in their way, and the

former’s Essay on Translated Verse is one of those numerous documents

which would have been of the utmost service to us, if directly preceptist

criticism in prose had not now been plentiful.

SIR THOMAS POPE BLOUNT.

145

His "Remarks upon Poetry," no less than the "Characters and Censures" which make up the other part of his work, are the purest compilation : and though we are certainly not without compilers in these days (what indeed can a Historian of Criticism do but compile to a great extent ?), there are very few of us who are at once honest enough and artless enough to follow the method of Blount. Whether he is arguing that good humour is essentially necessary to a poet (how about the genus irritabile ?) or that a poet should not be addicted to flattery, or discussing the "Elogue, Bucholic [sic], or Pastoral," whether he is following Phillips and Winstanley and borrowing from both, in compiling a dictionary of poets, he simply empties out his common-place book. "Dryden remarks," "Rapin observes," "Mr Cowley tells us," "Mr Rymer can nowise allow" (this is happy, for it was habitual with Mr Rymer "nowise to allow"), such are the usherings of his paragraphs. He is not uninteresting when he is original (cf. his remarks on Waller); but one is almost more grateful to him for his collections, which put briefly, and together, the critical dicta of a vast number of people. Here we may read, with minimum of trouble, how Julius Scaliger could not see anything in Catullus but what is common and ordinary ; how Dr Sprat said that till the time of Henry the Eighth there was nothing wrote in the English language except Chaucer that a man would care to read twice ; how Scaliger once more, and Petrus Crinitus, and Johannes Ludovicus Vives, and Eustatius Swartius, thought Claudian quite in the first rank of poets ; how Tanneguy le Fèvre shook his head over Pindar as having "something too much the air of the Dithyrambick" ; and how Cœlius Rhodiginus was good enough to find that same Dantes Aligerus, who displeased others, a "poet not contemptible."1 These things are infinitely pleasant to read, and give one a positive affection for Sir Thomas Pope Blount as one turns them in the big black print of his handy quarto ; yet perhaps it would be excessive to call him a great critic. What he does, besides providing this gazophylacium

1 The remark may with more proportion be made of Cœlius himself, a very worthy Humanist, whom Lilius Giraldus pronounces to be multifariam eruditus, parum tamen in pangendis versibus versatus.

K

146

DRYDEN AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES.

for the connoisseur, is to show how wide the interest ir

criticism was.

A further turn, and the last in this walk, may be furnished

to us by one of his own quotations (p. 137 of the Character:

Periodicals: and Censures) of an answer to the question

The Athenian “ Whether Milton and Waller were not the best

Mercury, &c. English poets, and which was the better of the

two ?” from The Athenian Mercury, vol. v., No. 4. For this

curious and interesting medley of Dunton's, and Samuel

Wesley's, and others', was almost the first to provide something

in English answering, or that might have answered, to the

Journal des Savants and the Mercure Galant. Actually, the

Mercury was not very literary. I do not pretend to have

examined the original volumes with any very great care. But

in the three copious books which were either directly compiled

out of it, or composed in imitation — the Athenian Oracle,1

Athenian Sport, and The British Apollo — literature holds no

very large place. The Oracle does indeed give at p. 438 a

very elaborate answer to the question, “ Whether the Dramatic

Poets of the Last Age exceeded those of this ?” and the Apollo,

besides a versification of the identical query and answer which

Blount had quoted, contains a long descant on the Origin of

Poetry, and a remarkably shrewd answer to the question,

“ Which is the best poet—Boileau, Molière, or La Fontaine ?”

But the time of literary periodicals in England was not yet,

though this was the very eve of it: and they must therefore be

postponed.2

1 The Athenian Mercury (1690-97)

ran to twenty volumes. The Oracle,

from which the late Mr Underhill

made his interesting selection (London,

n. d.), was issued in four. I have

one (London, 1703), which calls itself

an “ Entire Collection,” as well as

Athenian Sport (London, 1707), and The

British Apollo (3rd ed., London, 1718).

2 Excepting perhaps J. [Cornaud] de

La Croze's Works of the Learned, which,

translated mainly from the French,

began to appear monthly in August

1691, and was collected before long.

its contents are real reviews, and

though the books reviewed are of no

great interest, the summaries of their

contents are generally good, and the

views advanced are fairly argued.

(Texts, complete or extracted, of most

of the critics discussed in the latter

part of this chapter will be found in

Spingarn, op. cit. sup. The same

author's also cited chapter in Camb.

Hist. Eng. Lit., vol. vii. (1911), may be

consulted again as to the earlier part

of this.)

147

INTERCHAPTER II.

In the present Interchapter we come to a sort of Omphalos of

the whole of critical history. Here and here only, up to the

present day, do we find a Catholic Faith 1 of criticism, not merely

at last constituted, but practically accepted over the whole

literary world. In ancient times, though it is not difficult to

discern a creed of a not wholly dissimilar character, yet that

creed was arrived at in roundabout fashion, and was never

applied universally to poetry and prose as literature. In the

Middle Ages there was no such creed at all. In the eighteenth

century, which—or rather a certain aspect of it—continues the

seventeenth in England as elsewhere with little break, the

catholic faith still maintains, and even, as is the wont of such

things, rather tightens, its hold as received orthodoxy; but

there are grumblings, and threatenings, and upheavals on the

one hand, and on the other the tendency to a dangerous

latitudinarianism. In the Dissidents of the Eighteenth, and in

the whole Nineteenth, with so much of the Twentieth as can be

seen or foreseen, there is no parallel consensus even of a prevail-

ing party. Take a dozen critics of any distinction, at different

times and in different countries of the seventeenth century in

Europe, and ask them to enunciate some general laws and

principles of literary criticism. The results, if not slavishly

identical, would be practically the same, putting aside particular

and half unreal squabbles of Ancient and Modern and the like.

Do the same at any time for the last hundred—certainly for

the last eighty or ninety—years, and the result would be a

Babel. If any two of the utterances did not betray direct

1 For a draft "Confession" of it, v. sup., Interchapter I., pp. 94, 95.

contradiction, it would probably be because the speakers began

at entirely different facets of the subject.

We have seen in the last Interchapter how something like

this orthodoxy had been achieved—not without a good deal of

opposition, and hardly, in any case, with the result of author-

itative and complete statement—in Italy, and to some extent

borrowed thence, in other countries, before the end of the

sixteenth century itself. The seventeenth did little more than

crystallise it, lay stress on particular points, fill up some gaps,

arrange, codify, illustrate. The absence of dissidence, except

on the minor points, is most remarkable. In regard to Aristotle,

in particular, there are no Patrizis and hardly any Castel-

vetros. Men tack on a considerable body of Apocrypha to the

canonical books of the Stagirite, and misinterpret not a little

that he actually said. But they never take his general authority

in question, seldom the authority of any ancient, and that of

Horace least of all. The two great artificial conceptions of the

elaborate “Unities” drama, with Acts and Scenes taking the

place of the choric divisions, and of the still more artificial

“Heroic Poem,” with its Fable, its Epic Unity, its Machines,

and so forth, acquire in theory — though, luckily, as far as

England goes, by no means in practice—greater and greater

dignity. It becomes a sort of truism that the drama is the

most beautiful and ingenious, the heroic poem the noblest,

thing on which the human mind can exercise itself. But they

are difficult things, sir! very difficult things. Each is sharply

isolated as a Kind: and the other Kinds are ranged around and

below them. You never criticise any thing first in itself, but

with immediate reference to its Kind. If it does not fulfil the

specifications of that Kind, it is either cast out at once or

regarded with the deepest suspicion.

Further, all the Kinds in particular, as well as poetry itself

in general, possess, and are distinguished by, Qualities which

are, in the same way, rigidly demanded and inquired into.

It is generally, if not quite universally, admitted that a poem

must please : though critics are not quite agreed whether you

are bound to please only so as to instruct. But you must

please in the Kind, by the Quality, according to the Rule.

THE NEO-CLASSIC CREED.

149

There is no room for nondescripts ; or, if they are admitted at

all, they must cease to be nondescripts, and become Heroi-

comic, Heroi-satiric, "Tragical-comical-historical-pastoral,"1 or

what not.

This general view may seem unorthodox to those who put

faith in the notion—to be found in some books of worth, as

well as of worship—that there was a "Romantic revolt" in

the beginning of the seventeenth century—that there was even

a kind of irruption or recrudescence of mediæval barbarism, and

that the pronounced and hardened classicism of the later

century was a fresh reaction—a case of Boileau à la rescousse !

The texts, and the facts, and the dates, do not, to my thinking,

justify this view of history, in so far, at least, as criticism is

concerned. The crystallising of the classical creed goes on

regardless of Euphuism, earlier and later, in England, of

Marinism in Italy, of Culteranism and Conceptism in Spain, of

the irregular outburst of similar tastes in France, which marks

the reign of Louis XIII. In England, Sidney, at the beginning

of the great Elizabethan period, holds out hands to Jonson at

the end.

At the same time, this accepted faith of Criticism, when we

come to examine it, is a very peculiar Catholicity. Uncom-

promisingly Aristotelian in profession, its Aristotelianism, as

has been recognised by an increasing number of experts from

the time of Lessing downwards, is hopelessly adulterated.

Many of the insertions and accretions are purely arbitrary ;

others come from a combination of inability to forget, and

obstinate refusal frankly to recognise, the fact that the case

is quite a different case from that which Aristotle was dia-

gnosing. But, by the time at least when the creed became

triumphant, a new Pope, a new Court of Appeal, has been

foisted in, styling itself Good Sense, Reason, or even (though

quite Antiphysic) Nature. That this anti-Pope, this Antiphysis,

was partly created by the excesses of the Euphuist-Gongorist

1 It may be doubted whether there

is anything more wonderful in Shake-

speare than the way in which this

Polonian speech, at one slight side-blow,

impales sixteenth-seventeenth-century

criticism, with the due pin, on the due

piece of cork, for ever.

150

THE NEO-CLASSIC CREED.

movements, need not be denied; but this is comparatively irrelevant. The most interesting by-product of the processes going on is the curious, and sometimes very ludicrous, attempt to conciliate that furor poeticus which the ancients had never denied, with those dictates of good sense which the ancients were presumed to have accepted and embodied.

By degrees critical supremacy passed from Italy to France.1 This passing is an accepted truth, and like most, though not all, accepted truths, this has so much of the real quality that it is idle to cavil at it. That it has been abused there can be little doubt—or could be little if people would take the small trouble necessary to ascertain the facts. I do not know who first invented the term “Gallo-Classic,” which, to judge by those Röntgen rays which the reader of examination-papers can apply, has sunk deep into the youthful mind of this country. It is a bad word. I have taken leave to call it “question-begging, clumsy, and incomplete,” before now; and I repeat those epithets with a fresh emphasis here. It begs the question whether “Italo-Classic” would not, in its own kind, be the properer term : it is clumsy because the two parts of it are not used in the same sense; and it is incomplete because it does not intimate that much beside French influence, and that a very peculiar and sophisticated kind of Classical influence, went to the making of the thing. But there was French influence: and for some three-quarters of a century France was the head manufactory in which Italian, Classical, and other ideas were torn up and remade into a sort of critical shoddy with which (as with other French shoddy in that and other times) Europe was rather too eager to clothe itself.

The Quarrel of the Ancients and Moderns—Italian in origin and English by borrowing from France, but in the main French—might look like revolt against Neo-Classicism,2 and

1 The attitude of Milton and Dryden respectively illustrates this well. There was scarcely more than twenty years between the two poets. But Milton looks to the Italians first, if not also last, among the moderns, for criticism.

Dryden, though he knows and cites them, does not.

2 “Neo-classic” itself is not a very “blessed” word ; but it has been long recognised, and the objections to it are mainly formal.

it undoubtedly spread seeds of the more successful revolution

which followed; but the more one studies it, the more one

sees that the revolt was in the main unconscious. The

Moderns were, as a rule, just as "classical" in their ideas

as the Ancients. They were as incapable of catholic judg-

ment; they were even more ignorant of literature as a

whole; they were at least as apt to introduce non-

literary criteria; they were as much under the obsession of

the Kind, the Rule (cast-iron, not leaden), the sweeping

generalisation. Too commonly the thing comes to this--

that the man who can conjugate tupto will not hear of any-

thing which lessens the importance of that gift, and that

the man who cannot conjugate tupto will not hear of any

virtue attaching to it.

But though France may usurp and apparently possess the

hegemony, England is of almost the greatest importance,

though this importance belongs entirely to one man. This

one man in his time played many parts: and as the main

aim of literature is to give pleasure, and to produce original

sources thereof, we cannot perhaps say that his critical part

was the greatest. But we may almost say that it was the

most important. We can imagine English literature without

the poetry of Dryden: it would be woefully impoverished, but

somebody would take up the burden, probably before Pope.

Certainly Pope would take it up, though with much more to

do. But English criticism, and, what is more, European

criticism of the best and most fruitful kind, would have had,

if Dryden had been absent, to seek some totally new source:

and it is impossible to tell where that source would have

been found. There is no precedent anywhere for Dryden's

peculiar way of shaking different literatures and different

examples of literature together, of indicating the things that

please him in all, and of at least attempting to find out why

they please him. It is this, not his parade of Rules, and his

gleanings from the books, that makes his critical glory: and

it is this in which, among critics up to his own time, he is

alone.

Yet even he does parade "rules"; even he does belaud

Rapin, and Le Bossu, and even Rymer; even he would have

been, no doubt, quite as ready to take the oath to Boileau as

he was nobly determined not to take it to William. His

genius is recalcitrant to the orthodoxy of the time; but some-

thing else in him accepts it. It is not for nothing that he

never published that word of power which dissolves all the

spells of Duessa — “Had Aristotle seen our plays, he might

have changed his mind.”

As one result of the establishment of Neo-Classicism, there

was evolved, towards the end of the seventeenth century, a

sort of false Florimel or Duessa, who was called Taste. She

was rather a Protean Goddess, and reflected the knowledge or

the want of it, the real taste or the want of it, possessed by

her priests and worshippers. The Taste of Dryden and the

Taste of Rymer are totally different things. But in all save the

very happiest minds, Taste, as far as Poetry is concerned almost

wholly, and to a great extent as regards prose, is vitiated by

all manner of mistaken assumptions, polluted by all manner of

foolish and hurtful idolatries. There is the Idol of the Kind

which has been noticed; the Idol of the Quality; the Idol of

Good Sense, the most devouring of all.1 It is agreed, and agreed

very pardonably, that it is not well to write

“And periwig with snow the bald pate woods.”

But the baser folk go on from this—and all but the very

noblest have some difficulty in preventing themselves from

going on—to think that a man should not write

“The multitudinous seas incarnadine.”

There is a sense, and a very proper sense, that, in a certain

general way, style must suit subjects: that you ought not to

write to a Child of Quality, aged five, as you would do to Queen

Anne, aged fifty.2 But this topples over into the most absurd

1 Perhaps there is not a more unhappy gibe in literature (which has

many such) than that in The Rehearsal

on Bayes, who is made to say that

“Spirits must not be confined to talk

sense.” They certainly must not;

even Addison (Sp., 419) admits that

“their sense ought to be a little dis-

coloured.” There is much virtue in

this “discolour.”

2 It may be said that this was later.

But Prior was a man of thirty-six in

limitations, so that, a little later than our actual time, we shall

find Pope taking modest credit to himself with Spence for that,

though Virgil in his Pastorals "has sometimes six or eight lines

together that are epic," he had been so scrupulous as "scarce

ever to have two together, even in the Messiah." Indeed it is

hardly possible to find a better reductio ad absurdum of Neo-

Classicism than this. You lay down (as in late classic times

Servius did lay it down), from a general induction of the

practice of a particular poet, such and such a rule about

Virgil's styles in his various works. Then you turn this

individual observation into a general rule. And then you go

near to find fault with the very poet from whom you have

derived it because he does not always observe it—as if his

unquestionable exceptions had not as much authority as his

supposed rules. Nor is there any doubt that this fallacy

derives colour and support from the false Good Sense, the

Pseudo-Reason. The induction from practice is hitched on to

Reason so as to become a deduction and a demonstration, and

once established as that, you deduce from it anything you like.

Meanwhile Good Sense, as complaisant to the critic as stern

to the victim of his criticism, will approve or disapprove any-

thing that you choose to approve or disapprove, will set her

seal to any arbitrary decision, any unjust or purblind whim,

and can only be trusted with certainty to set her face in-

variably against the highest poetry, and often against certain

kinds not so high.1

The result of all this is that, with the exception of Dryden,

no critic of the time achieves, with any success, the highest

function of the true critic of literature, the discovery and

celebration of beautiful literary things. It is not their

business, or their wish, to set free the "lovely prisoned soul

of Eucharis." If Eucharis will get a ticket from the patron-

esses of the contemporary Almack's, and dress herself in the

prescribed uniform, and come up for judgment with the

1 Yet it is not for the twentieth earlier ages, and reproving Marlowe

century to throw stones at the seven teenth, till we leave off laying down "too lyrical" in tragedy.

rules of our own manufacture for still

154

THE NEO-CLASSIC CREED.

proper courtesy, they will do her such justice as Minerva

has enabled them to do; but if not, not. Sometimes (as in

the case of the immortal Person of Quality who took the

trouble to get Spenser into order 1) they will good-naturedly

endeavour to give her a better chance, poor thing! But they

will never kiss the daughter of Hippocrates on the mouth,

and receive the reward thereto appropriated.

That, on the other hand, there is observable, throughout the

century, a certain interpenetration of the older and more

Romantic spirit—in the creative work chiefly, but even there

dying down, in the critical overmastered from the first, and

less and less perceptible, — this opinion will meet with no

contradiction here, but, on the contrary, with the strongest

support. All the eccentric phenomena, as they may be called,

which have been noticed from Euphuism to Gongorism, are

symptoms of this. Yet even this was, as has been said,

steadily dying down; and by the end of the century the

old Phœnix was nearly in ashes, though the new bird was

to take slow rebirth from them. I am myself inclined to

think that the signs of Romantic leaning in Dryden belong

to the new, not to the old, chapter of symptoms; and that

in this way England, the last, save perhaps Spain, to give

up, was the first to feel again for, the standard of Romanticism.

But in this Dryden was in advance, not merely of all his

countrymen, but of all Europe; and he did not himself

definitely raise any flag of revolt. On the contrary, he always

supposed himself to be, and sometimes was, arguing for a

reasonable and liberal Classicism.

The Italian poet, satirist, and critic, Tassoni,2 once wrote an

interesting paradox on the admitted lovesomeness, body and

soul, of le donne brutte, and on the tricks which bruttezza and

bellezza play to each other. If that ingenious poet and polemic

had but pushed his inquiries a little further, and extended

1 See Spenser Redivivus. London,

1686-87. The Person of Quality "delivers" Spenser "in Heroick numbers,"

as per sample—

"Then to the lady gallant Arthur said,

All grief repeated is more grievous made."

This is "what Spenser ought to have

been, instead of what is to be found

in himself."

2 Hist. Crit., ii. 326.

them in purview as well as lineally, he might have come to great things in criticism. It might, for instance, have struck him whether the accepted notions of literary beauty were not peculiarly like those of physical beauty, which were also those of his century. These laws laid it down that "from the chin to the nose" that the whole figure must be "ten faces high," and that "the inside of the arm, from the place where the muscle disappears to the middle, is four noses"; while the careful calculators noted all the while with dismay that both the Apollo Belvidere and the Medicean Venus set these proportions at the most god-like defiance.1 He would (or he might) have observed that, just as when you have settled exactly what a bella donna must not have, there is apt to sail, or slip, into the room somebody with that particular characteristic to whom you become a hopeless slave, so, when you have settled the qualifications of the drama and those of the epic with all the infallible finality of Stome's stop-watch critic, there comes you out some impudent production which is an admirable poem, while the obedient begettings of your rules are worthless rubbish. Tassoni, I say, might have done this; he seems to have had quite the temper to do it; but he did it not. It was doubtless with him, as with others, a case of Di terrent et Jupiter hostis—the gods of their world and their time forbade them.

A summary of the whole merits and defects of Neo-Classicism must again be postponed; while as for the special defects of this special period we have said enough. Its special merits are partly of a negative kind, but they certainly exist. In the Middle Ages, as we have seen, there was no code of criticism at all; in the sixteenth century only a growing approach to one, though the approach had become very near at the last. Some outbreaks of heterodoxy—the last stand of Romance for the time—had, as usually happens, drawn the orthodox together, had made them sign a definite, or almost definite, instrument or confession. Just or unjust, adequate or

1 See the whole absurd scheme in Translation of Du Fresnoy (ed. cit. the appendix - matter to Dryden's sup., xvii. 429).

156

THE NEO-CLASSIC CREED.

inadequate, even consistent or inconsistent, as it may be, from

the point of view of a very searching and all-inspecting logic,

the Neo-Classicism of the late seventeenth century was a thing

about which there could be no mistake. It knew its own mind

about everything which it chose to consider, and valiantly shut

its eyes to everything which it chose to ignore. For a time—a

short time only, of course, for the triumph of a religion is

always the signal for the appearance of a heresy—the majority

of people had not much more doubt about what was the proper

thing to believe in and admire in literature, than they had

about the multiplication table. It became possible to write

real literary histories: it became still more easily possible to

criticise new books on a definite basis of accepted postulates.

And it is by no means certain that this provisional orthodoxy

was not a necessary condition of the growth of the new study

of Æsthetic, which, though it has done criticism harm as well

as good, has certainly done it good as well as harm.

Nor is it possible to deny that there was something to admire

in the creed itself. It was weakest—it was in fact exceedingly

weak—on the poetical side; but the world happened to have

accumulated a remarkably good stock of poetry in the last two

centuries or so, and a fallow, or a cessation of manufacture, was

not undesirable. Prose, on the other hand, had never been

got into proper order in the vernaculars; and it was urgently

desirable that it should be so got. The very precepts of the

classical creed which were most mischievous in poetry were

sovereign for prose. Here also they might hinder the develop-

ment of eccentric excellence; but it was not eccentric excel-

lence that was wanted. Unjust things have been said about the

poetry of the Augustan ages; just things may be said against

the criticism which mainly controlled that poetry. But it is

hardly excessive to say that every precept—not purely metrical

—contained in the Arts of Boileau and of Pope, is just and true

for Prose. You may fly in the face of almost every one of these

precepts and be all the better poet; fly in the face of almost

any one of them in prose, and you must have extraordinary

genius if you do not rue it.

Even as to poetry itself some defence may be made. This

THE NEO-CLASSIC CREED.

157

poetry needed these rules; or rather, to speak more critically,

these rules expressed the spirit of this poetry. The later and

weaker metaphysicals in England, and fantasts in France, the

Marinists and Gongorists in Spain and Italy, had shown what

happens when Furor [vere] Poeticus ceases to ply the oars, and

Good Sense has not come to take the helm. It is pretty certain

that, if this criticism had not ruled, its absence would not

have brought about good or great Romantic poetry; we should

at best have had a few more Dyers and Lady Winchelseas. But

if it had not ruled we should have had a less perfect Pope and

less presentable minorities of this kind, and have been by no

means consoled by a supply of eighteenth-century Clevelands.

Once more, the period has the criticism that it wants, the

criticism that will enable it to give us its own good things

at their own best, and to keep off things which must almost

certainly have been bad.

158

CHAPTER IV.

FROM ADDISON TO JOHNSON.

CRITICISM AT DRYDEN'S DEATH—BYSSHE'S 'ART OF ENGLISH POETRY'—GILDON

—WELSTED—DENNIS—ON RYMER—ON SHAKESPEARE—ON "MACHINES"

—HIS GENERAL THEORY OF POETRY—ADDISON—THE 'ACCOUNT OF THE

BEST KNOWN ENGLISH POETS'—THE 'SPECTATOR' CRITICISMS—ON TRUE

AND FALSE WIT—ON TRAGEDY—ON MILTON—THE "PLEASURES OF THE

IMAGINATION"—HIS GENERAL CRITICAL VALUE—STEELE—ATTERBURY

—SWIFT—'THE BATTLE OF THE BOOKS'—THE 'TALE OF A TUB'—MINOR

WORKS—POPE—THE 'LETTERS'—THE SHAKESPEARE PREFACE—SPENCE'S

'ANECDOTES'—THE 'ESSAY ON CRITICISM'—THE 'EPISTLE TO AUGUSTUS'

—REMARKS ON POPE AS A CRITIC, AND THE CRITICAL ATTITUDE OF HIS

GROUP—PHILOSOPHICAL AND PROFESSIONAL CRITICS—TRAPP—BLAIR—

THE 'LECTURES ON RHETORIC'—THE 'DISSERTATION ON OSSIAN'—KAMES

—THE 'ELEMENTS OF CRITICISM'—CAMPBELL—THE 'PHILOSOPHY OF

RHETORIC'—HARRIS—THE 'PHILOLOGICAL ENQUIRIES'—"ESTIMATE"

BROWN : HIS 'HISTORY OF POETRY'—JOHNSON : HIS PREPARATION FOR

CRITICISM—'THE RAMBLER' ON MILTON—ON SPENSER—ON HISTORY AND

LETTER-WRITING — ON TRAGI-COMEDY — "DICK MINIM".— 'RASSELAS'

—THE SHAKESPEARE PREFACE — THE 'LIVES OF THE POETS' — THEIR

GENERAL MERITS—THE 'COWLEY'—THE 'MILTON'—THE 'DRYDEN' AND

'POPE'—THE 'COLLINS' AND 'GRAY'—THE CRITICAL GREATNESS OF

THE 'LIVES' AND OF JOHNSON—MINOR CRITICISM : PERIODICAL AND

OTHER—GOLDSMITH—VICESIMUS KNOX—SCOTT OF AMWELL.

The death of Dryden punctuates, with an exactness not often attainable in literary history, the division between sevententh- and eighteenth-century literature in England.1 In general letters

1 An interesting monograph on our subject, before and after 1700, is Herr Paul Hamelius's Die Kritik in der Engl. Literatur des 17 und 18 Jahrhunderts (Leipsic, 1897). Herr Hamelius agrees with me on the romantic element in Dryden (though not as to

that in Dennis), and as to reducing the importance of French influence in England. To the collections of texts previously mentioned should be added Mr. Nichol Smith's most useful 18th Century Essays on Shakespeare (Glasgow, 1903).

BYSSHE.

159

it is succeeded—not at all immediately—by the great school of

Criticism Queen Anne men. In criticism 1 one of the greatest

at Dryden's of these, a special pupil of Dryden, takes up the

death. running at this interval, and others a little later;

but the succession is steadily maintained. Dennis, an un-

happily belated person, continues his exertions; but has

very much the worse fortune, critical as well as pecuniary, in

his later days. And in the very year of the death there appears

an egregious work—extremely popular, maleficently powerful

beyond all doubt throughout the eighteenth century, and now

chiefly known to non-experts in our days by the humorous

contradiction which gave its author's name to Shelley, and

by the chance which made a literary connection, towards the

very end of its period of influence, between three such extra-

ordinarily assorted persons as Afra Behn, Bysshe himself, and

William Blake.2

Edward Bysshe's Art of English Poetry 3 puts the eighteenth-

century theory of this art with a rigour and completeness which

can only be attributed either to something like genius,

Bysshe's or to a wonderful and complete absence of it. His

Art of English Rules for Making English Verse are the first part

Poetry. of the book in order, but much the least in bulk.

Then follow, first a collection of "the most natural and sublime

thoughts of the best English poets," or, in other words, an

anthology, reasoned under headings, from poets of the seven-

1 The excessively rare Parliament of

Critics (London, 1702), a copy of which

has been kindly lent me by Mr Gregory

Smith, is more of what it calls itself,

a "banter," than of a serious com-

position. But it connects itself not

obscurely with the Collier quarrel.

2 See Mr Swinburne's William Blake,

p. 130 note, for the sortes Bysshiance of

Blake and his wife.

3 My copy is the Third Edition,

"with large improvements," London,

1708. Some put the first at 1702, not

1709. Before Bysshe, Joshua Poole, a

schoolmaster, had given posthumously

(1657 : I have ed. 2, London, 1677),

-with a short dedication and a curious

verse proem of his own, and an Insti-

tution signed J. D.,—The English Par-

nassus. This contains a double gradus

of epithets and passages, an "Alphabet

of [Rhyming] Monosyllables," and some

"Forms of Compliment," &c. The

Institution stoutly defends "Rhythm"

[i.e., rhyme], notices Sidney, Daniel,

Puttenham, &c., shortly defines Kinds,

objects to excessive enjambment (note

the time, 1657) and to polysyllables,

but is sensible. (See, for more on it,

the present writer's History of English

Prosody (London, 1906-10), ii. 345-8.)

160

FROM ADDISON TO JOHNSON.

teenth century, extending to about four hundred and fifty pages;

and last a Dictionary of Rhymes. The "best English poets"

may be useful to give in a note.1 The Dictionary is preceded

by a few prefatory remarks, including one important historic-

ally, "Rhyme is by all allowed to be the chief ornament of

versification in the modern languages." The killing frost which

had fallen on the flowers of Elizabethan poetry had killed one

weed at any rate-the craze against rhyme.

The Rules are preceded by a partly apologetic Preface, which

disclaims any wish to furnish tools to poetasters, and puts the

work "under the awful guard of the immortal Shakespeare,

Milton [note that this was before Addison's critique], Dryden,

&c." The keynote is struck, in the very first sentence of the

text, with that uncompromisingness which makes one rather

admire Bysshe. "The Structure of our verses, whether blank

or in rhyme, consists in a certain number of syllables; not in

feet composed of long and short syllables, as the verse of the

Greeks and Romans." And he adds that, though some ingenious

persons formerly puzzled themselves in prescribing rules for

the quantity of English syllables, and composed verses by the

measure of dactyls and spondees, yet that design is now wholly

exploded. In other words, he cannot conceive classical feet

without classical arrangement of feet.

"Our poetry admits, for the most part, of but three sorts of

verses, those of 10, 8, and 7 syllables. Those of 4, 6, 9, 11, 12,

and 14 are generally employed in masks and operas." But 12

and 14 may be used in Heroic verse with grace. Accent must

be observed; and the Pause must be at or near the middle,

though in Heroics it may be at the 3rd, 4th, 5th, 6th, or 7th

syllable, determined by the seat of the accent. Still, pauses at

the 3rd and 7th must be used sparingly. The 2nd and 8th

"can produce no true harmony"; and he seems to have refused

1 Addison, Atterbury, Beaumont and

Fletcher, Afra Behn, Blackmore, Tom

Brown, Buckingham, Cleveland, Con-

greve, Cowley, Creech, Davenant (2),

Denham, Dennis, Dorset, Dryden,

Duke, Garth, Halifax, Harvey, Sir

R. Howard, Hudibras, Jonson, Lee.

Milton, Mulgrave, Oldham, Otway,

Prior, Ratcliff, Rochester, Roscommon,

Rowe, Sedley, Shakespeare, Southern,

Sprat, Stafford, Stepney, Suckling,

Tate, Walsh, Waller, Wycherley, and

Yalden. Observe that no non-dramatic

poet earlier than Cowley is admitted.

to contemplate anything so awful as a pause at the 1st or 9th.

After decasyllables, octosyllables are commonest. As for lines

of 9 and 11 syllables, " with the accent on the last [i.e., anapæstic measures], the disagreeableness of their measure has

wholly excluded them from serious subjects." The refining

effected since the days of Chaucer, Spenser, and other ancient

poets consists especially in the avoidance of the concourse of

vowels and in the rigid elision of the article, the contraction of

preterperfect tenses (" amaz'd," not " amazed "), the rejection of

alliteration (an instance in Dryden is apologised for), of split-

ting words closely connected at the end of a verse, and of

polysyllables.

And a very large number of minute rules follow, the one

guiding principle of which is to reduce every line to its

syllabic minimum, never allowing trisyllabic substitution.

The book, base and mechanical as it may seem, is of the

first historical importance. It will be seen, even from these

few extracts, that the excellent Bysshe has no doubts, no half-

lights. The idea, which we have seen crystallising for a

century and a half, that English poetry is as strictly and

inexorably syllabic as French, and much more so than Greek

or Latin, is here put in its baldest crudity. Bysshe will have

no feet at all : and no other division within the line but at the

pause, which is to be as centripetal as possible, like the French

cæsura. It follows from this that, except the feminine or double

ending, which is allowed ostensibly as a grace to rhymes, though

also in blank verse, nothing extra to the ten, the eight, or

whatever the line-norm may be, is permitted on any account.

Articles, prepositions that will stand it, pronouns, are to be

rigidly elided; weak or short syllables in the interior of words

must be slurred out. There is (only that Bysshe will not have

even the name of foot) no room for a trisyllabic foot anywhere,

in what he equally refuses to call iambic or trochaic verse.

But what is more startling still is that trisyllabic feet dis-

appear, not merely from the octosyllable and the heroic, but

from English prosody, or are admitted only to " Compositions

for Musick and the lowest sort of burlesque." Dryden might

have written, " After the pangs of a desperate lover"; Prior

L

162

FROM ADDISON TO JOHNSON.

might be writing "Dear Chloe, how blubbered is that pretty

face": but Bysshe sternly averts his face from them.

Now, if this astonishing impoverishment of English poetry

had been the isolated crotchet of a pedant or a poetaster, it

would at most deserve notice in a note. But it was nothing

of the kind. "He," this insignificant person, "said it": they

went and did it. It expressed the actual poetic practice of

serious poets from Pope to Goldsmith: and it expressed the

deliberate theoretic creed of such a critic as Johnson. The

contrary practice of the great old poets was at best a "licence,"

at worst a "fault." What had actually happened to French—that

it had been reduced to the iamb—what Gascoigne had

lamented and protested against, long before, was here threatened

—or rather, with bland ignoring, even of threat, laid down—as

the unquestioned and unquestionable law of English. The

whole eighteenth century did not, indeed, go the entire length

of Bysshe. Prior—it is his everlasting glory in English poeti-

cal history—took care of that, and not only saved anapæstic

cadence for us, but made it more popular than ever. But

the eighteenth century continued, charmingly as it wrote them,

to be a little ashamed of its anapæsts, to write them affectedly

as a relaxation, if not even a derogation—to indulge in them

(just as it might indulge in leap-frog with wig and long-

skirted coat laid aside) avowedly for a frolic. And about the

decasyllable — not quite so rigidly about the octosyllable—

it accepted Bysshe almost without a protest. All the infinite

variety of true English prosody, all the gliding or melting

trochees, all the passion and throb which trisyllabic feet give

to iambic verse, were sacrificed, all freedom of pause was re-

linquished, and the decasyllable tramped, the octosyllable

tripped, as regularly and as monotonously as a High Dutch

grenadier or a Low Dutch clock.

Bysshe had been frankly formal; it is not a small merit in

him that he knew what he had to do and did it: but persons

Gildon.

who were little if at all above him in taste or in

intellect affected to despise him for this, and Mr

Charles Gildon in his Complete Art of Poetry,1 published a few

1 London, 1718.

years later, is very high and mighty with Bysshe. As for himself he does not think that Poetry consists even in "colouring," but in Design: and he hashes up his French originals into some would - be modish dialogues, in which ladies of fashion attack and defend poetry on the old lines, before he comes to minuter recommendations. These differ chiefly from Bysshe's in that they are wordier, less peremptory, and given to substitute the vagueness of the journalist for the precision of the schoolmaster. Nor was this by any means Gildon's only contribution to criticism. Among the others perhaps the most interesting is an anonymous and undated, but apparently not doubtful, rifacimento of Langbaine,1 which is curious as an example of peine du talion. Gildon (who has employed his own or some other "careful hand" to give himself an ingeniously, because not extravagantly, complimentary notice in the Appendix) serves Langbaine in Langbaine's own fashion ; and, not contented with reversing his judgements, indulges freely in such phrases as "Mr Langbain mistakes," "those scurrilous and digressory remarks with which Mr Langbain has bespattered him [Dryden]," &c. The book is in the main bibliographic and biographic rather than critical.

A name which has something to do with criticism, and which associates itself naturally with those of Dennis and Gildon in the regiment of Pope's victims, is that of Leonard Welsted, who in 1712 published a translation of Longinus, "with some remarks on the English Poets." Welsted's translation, whether made directly from the Greek or not,2 is readable enough, and his alternative title, "A treatise on the Sovereign Perfection of Writing," is not unhappy. Neither are his Preface and his appended "Remarks" contemptible. He can appreciate not merely Milton but Spenser ; is (how unlike Rymer!) transported with Othello, and

1 Lives . . . improved and continued down to this time by a Careful Hand. (No date in my copy, but the Dict. Nat. Biog. gives 1699.) Since this was written Gildon has found some defenders or apologists. He needs them.

2 I hope the passing suspicion is not illiberal. But why should he call the Palmyrene "Zenobie" in English? Cela sent furieusement son François. (For the critical work of yet another who felt the lash of Pope—James Ralph—see Hist. Crit., ii. 554.

especially with its conclusion; and if he is not superior to

others in scorning "Latin rhymes," at least has sufficient

independence to be very irreverent to Buchanan.

But there was a contemporary of Bysshe's, more famous

than either Gildon or Welsted, whose soul was equally above

mere prosodic precept, and to whom, as it happens, Gildon

himself pays a compliment, as to a denizen of Grub Street, of

whom Grub Street could not but feel that he did it some

honour by herding with its more native and genuine population.

Of him we must say something — not, as we might almost

have said it, in juxtaposition with the great poet and critic

whom he had earlier admired, but before dealing with the lesser,

but still great, successors of Dryden, with whom he came into

collision in his evil days.

If John Dennis had been acquainted with the poetry of

Tennyson (at which he would probably have railed in his best

manner, in which he would certainly have detected

plagiarisms from the classics), he too might have ap-

plied to himself the words of Ulysses, "I am become a name."

Everybody who has the very slightest knowledge of English

literature knows, if only in connection with Dryden, Addison,

and Pope, the surly, narrow, but not quite ignorant or incom-

petent critic, who in his younger and more genial days admired

the first, and in his soured old age attacked the second and

third. But it may be doubted whether very many persons have

an acquaintance, at all extensive, with his works. They were

never collected; the Select Works of John Dennis1 mainly con-

sist of his utterly worthless verse. Much of the criticism is hidden

away in prefaces which were seldom reprinted, and the original

editions of which have become very rare. Even good libraries

frequently contain only two or three out of more than a dozen

or a score of separate documents: and though the British

Museum itself is well furnished, it is necessary to range through

a large number of publications to obtain a complete view of

Dennis as a critic.

That view, when obtained, may perhaps differ not a little

from those which have, in a certain general way, succeeded each

1 2 vols., London, 1718.

other in current literary judgment. During the reign of Pope

and Addison, the scurrilous assailant of the first, and the more

courteous but in part severe censor of the second, was naturally

regarded as at best a grumbling pedant, at worst a worthless

Zoilus. The critics of the Romantic school were not likely to

be much attracted by Dennis. More recently, something of a

reaction has taken place in his favour; and it has become not

unusual to discover in him, if not exactly a Longinus or a

Coleridge, yet a serious and well-equipped critic, who actually

anticipated not a little that after-criticism has had to say.1

That this more charitable view is not entirely without founda-

tion may be at once admitted. As compared with Rymer, in

On Rymer. whose company he too often finds himself in modern

appreciation, Dennis shows, indeed, pretty well. He

very seldom—perhaps nowhere—exhibits that crass insensibility

to poetry which distinguishes “the worst critic who ever

lived.” One of his earliest and not his worst pieces, The Im-

partial Critic of 1693, an answer to Rymer himself, points

out with acuteness and vigour that “Tom the Second” would

ruin the English stage if he had his way, and even approaches

the sole causeway of criticism across the deep by advancing the

argument that the circumstances of the Greek drama were per-

fectly different from those of the English.2 Yet already there

are danger-signals. That the piece (which includes a Letter to

a Friend and some dialogues) contains a great deal of clumsy

jocularity, does not much matter. But when we find Dennis

devoting some of this jocularity to Antigone’s lamentation over

her death unwedded, we feel sadly that the man who can write

thus is scarcely to be trusted on the spirit of poetry. And the

admission that Rymer’s censures of Shakespeare are “in most

of the particulars very sensible and just” is practically ruinous.3

1 See, among others, Herr Hamelius,

op. cit. Yet it is interesting to find

that the passage of Dennis to which

his panegyrist gives the single and

signal honour of extract in an appen-

dix is purely ethical : it is all on “the

previous question.”

2 Had Dryden let his Cambridge

admirer see the Heads? (v. supra,

pp. 113, 137 notes.)

3 Although Dennis’s fun is heavy

enough, there are some interesting

touches, as this : “Port [then a novelty

in England, remember] is not so well

tasted as Claret : and intoxicates

sooner.” (See note at end of chapter.)

166

FROM ADDISON TO JOHNSON.

Dennis's answer to Collier is a little later,1 but still earlier

than most of his better known work; and it is very characteristic

of his manner, which has not often, I think, been exactly

described. As elsewhere, so in this tract, which is entitled

The Usefulness of the Stage to the Happiness of Mankind, to

Government and to Religion, Dennis is uncompromisingly

ethical; but he had here the excuse that Collier, to whom

he was replying, had taken the same line. There is less excuse

here or elsewhere for his method. This is to make a loud

clatter of assertions, arranged in a kind of pseudological order,

which seems to have really deceived the author, and may

possibly have deceived some of his readers, into believing it

syllogistic and conclusive. Dennis is very great at the word

"must." "As Poetry is an Art it must be an imitation of

nature"2 and so forth; seldom shall you find so many "musts"

anywhere as in Dennis, save perhaps in some of his modern

analogues. Like all who argue in this fashion, he becomes

unable to distinguish fact and his own opinion. Collier, for

instance, had quoted (quite correctly) Seneca's denunciation of

the Stage. To which Dennis replies, "It is not likely that

Seneca should condemn the drama, . . . since . . . he wrote

plays himself." That the identity of the philosopher and the

dramatist is not certain does not matter: the characteristic

thing is the setting of probability against fact. But with

Dennis hectoring assertion is everything. "It cannot possibly

be conceived that so reasonable a diversion as the drama can

encourage or incline men to so unreasonable a one as gaming or

so brutal a one as drunkenness." With a man who thinks this

an argument, argument is impossible.

The fact is that, though he has, as has been admitted, a cer-

tain advantage over Rymer, Lord Derby's observation that "He

1 It appeared in the very year of

the Short View (1698). I have a reprint

of it, issued many years later (1725),

but long before Dennis's death, to-

gether with The Advancement and Re-

formation of Modern Poetry and the

tragedy of Rinaldo and Armida, all

separately titled, but continuously

paged.

2 This is from the Advancement and

Reformation, which contains its author's

full definition of Poetry itself—not the

worst of such definitions. "Poetry is

an Imitation of Nature by a pathetic

and numerous speech."

never knew whether it was John or Thomas who answered

On Shake- the bell " will too often apply here. Rymer himself

speare. was not ignorant; Dennis, especially in regard to

ancient criticism, was still better instructed: and though both

were bad dramatists, with, in consequence, a conscious or un-

conscious bias on dramatic matters, Dennis was not so bad as

Rymer. His devotion to Dryden does him credit, though we

may suspect that it was not the best part of Dryden that he

liked: and, amid the almost frantic spite and scurrility of his

later attacks on Pope, he not unfrequently hits a weak place in

the " young squab short gentleman's " bright but not invulner-

able armour. Yet Dennis displays, as no really good critic

could do, the weaknesses of his time and school both in generals

and particulars. It is perfectly fair to compare him (giving

weight for genius of course) with Johnson, a critic whose general

views (except on port and claret) did not materially differ from

his own. And, if we do so, we shall find that while Johnson is

generally, if not invariably, " too good for such a breed, " Dennis

almost as constantly shows its worst features. He altered The

Merry Wives of Windsor into The Comical Gallant ¹—a most

illaudable action certainly, yet great Dryden's self had done

such things before. But he aggravated the crime by a preface,

in which he finds fault with the original as having " no less than

three actions " [would there were thirty-three !] by remarking

that, in the second part of Henry the Fourth, Falstaff " does

nothing but talk " [would he had talked so for five hundred

acts instead of five !] and by laying down ex cathedra such

generalities as that " Humour, not wit, is the business of

comedy, " a statement as false as would be its converse. In his

Essay on the Genius of Shakespeare ² he is not so very far

from Rymer himself in the drivelling arbitrariness of his

criticism. Shakespeare has actually made Aufidius, the general

of the Volcians, a base and profligate villain ! Even Coriolanus

himself is allowed to be called a traitor by Aufidius, and no-

body contradicts ! The rabble in Julius Cæsar and other such

things " show want of Art, " and there is a painful disregard of

Poetical Justice. The same hopeless wrong-headedness and (if

¹ London, 1702.

² London, 1712.

168

FROM ADDISON TO JOHNSON.

I may so say) wrong-mindedness appear in a very different

work, the Remarks on the Rape of the Lock.1 I do not refer to

Dennis's mere scurrilities about "Ap—E" and the like. But

On part of the piece is quite serious criticism. Few of

"Machines." us in modern times care much for the "machinery"

of this brilliantly artificial poem; but fewer would think of

objecting to it on Dennis's grounds. Machines, it seems,

must be—

i. Taken from the religion of the Poet's country.

ii. Allegorical in their application.

iii. Corresponding though opposed to each other.

iv. Justly subordinated and proportioned.

And Pope's machines, we are told, fail in all these respects.

Now, putting the fourth ground aside as being a mere matter

of opinion (and some who are not fervent Papists think the

machines of the Rape very prettily and cleverly arranged in

their puppet-show way), one may ask Dennis "Who on earth

told you so?" in respect of all the others. And if he alleged

(as he might) this or that sixteenth or seventeenth century

authority, "And who on earth told him so? and what authority

had the authority? Why should machines be taken only from

the religion of the country? Why should they be allegorical?

Why should Machine Dick on the one side invariably nod to

Machine Harry on the other?" And even if some sort of

answer be forthcoming, "Why should the poet not do as he

pleases if he succeeds thereby in giving the poetic pleasure?"

To which last query of course neither Dennis nor any of his

school could return any answer, except of the kind that requires

bell, book, and candle.

Nor would he have hesitated to use this, for he is a rule-

critic of the very straitest kind, a "Tantivy" of poetic Divine

His general Right. In his three chief books of abstract criticism2

theory of he endeavours to elaborate, with Longinus in part

Poetry. for code, and with Milton for example, a noble

indeed, and creditable, but utterly arbitrary and hopelessly

1 London, 1728.

2 The Advancement and Reformation of Poetry, 1701; A Large Account of

the Taste in Poetry, next year; and Grounds of Criticism in Poetry, 1704.

narrow theory of poetry as necessarily religious, and as having

for its sole real end the reformation of the mind, by a sort of

enlarged Aristotelian katharsis as to spirit, and by attention

to the strict laws of the art in form. Poetical Justice was a

kind of mediate divinity to Dennis: as we have seen, he up-

braided Shakespeare for the want of it; he remonstrated, in

the Spectator, No. 548, and elsewhere, with Addison for taking

too little account of it; part at least of his enthusiasm for

Milton comes from Milton's avowed intention to make his

poem a theodicy.

A noble error! let it be repeated, with no hint or shadow of

sarcasm or of irreverence; but a fatal error as well. That

Poetry, like all things human, lives and moves and has its

being in God, the present writer believes as fervently and

unhesitatingly as any Platonic philosopher or any Patristic

theologian; and he would cheerfully incur the wrath of

Savonarola by applying the epithet "divine," in its fullest

meaning, not merely to tragedy and epic and hymn, but to

song of wine and of love. But this is not what Dennis meant

at all. He meant that Poetry is to have a definitely religious,

definitely moral purpose—not that it is and tends of itself

necessarily ad majorem Dei gloriam, but that we are to shape

it according to what our theological and ethical ideas of the

glory of God are. This way easily comes bad poetry, not at all

easily good; and it excludes poetic varieties which may be as

good as the best written in obedience to it, and better. More-

over, putting Dennis's notion of the end of Poetry together with

his notion of its method or art (which latter is to be adjusted

to some at least of the straitest classical precepts), we can easily

comprehend, and could easily have anticipated, the narrow in-

tolerance and the hectoring pedantry which he shows towards

all who follow not him. In a new sense—not so very different

from the old mediæval one, though put with no mediæval

glamour, and by an exponent full of eighteenth-century pro-

saism, yet destitute of eighteenth-century neatness and con-

cinnity—Poetry becomes a part of theology; and the mere

irritableness of the man of letters is aggravated into the odium

theologicum. Bad poets (that is to say, bad according to

170

FROM ADDISON TO JOHNSON.

Dennis) are not merely faulty artists but wicked men; of this

Dennis is sure. "And when a man is sure," as he himself

sonnewhere naïvely observes, "'tis his duty to speak with a

modest assurance." We know, from examples more recent

than poor Dennis, that, when a man is thus minded, his assur-

ance is very apt to eat up his modesty, taking his charity,

his good manners, and some other things, as condiments to the

meal.

Dennis and Addison, though the latter did not escape the

absolute impartiality of the former's carping, were on terms of

Addison. mutual respect which, considering all things, were

creditable to both. During the latter part of his

rather short lifetime Addison, it is hardly necessary to say,

enjoyed a sort of mild dictatorship in Criticism as in other

departments of literature; and his right to it was scarcely

disputed till near the close of the century, though Johnson

knew that he was not deep, and tells us that, in his own last

days, it was almost a fashion to look down on Addisonian

criticism. If, like others, he was displaced by the Romantic

revival, he received more lenient treatment than some, in virtue

partly of his own general moderation, partly of his championship

of Milton. Yet while his original literary gifts recovered high

place during the nineteenth century, his criticism has often

been considered to possess scarcely more than historic interest,

and has sometimes been rather roughly handled—for instance,

by Mr Matthew Arnold. But a recent writer,1 by arguing that

Addison's treatment of the Imágination, as a separate faculty,

introduced a new principle into criticism, has at any rate

claimed for him a position which, if it could be granted,

would seat him among the very greatest masters of the art,

with Aristotle and Longinus among his own forerunners. As

usual let us, before discussing these various estimates, see what

Addison actually did as a critic.2

His début as such was not fortunate. He was, it is true, only

1 Mr W. Basil Worsfold in his Prin-

ciples of Criticism (London, 1897). I

hope that nothing which, in a politely

controversial tone, I may have to say

here, will be taken as disparagement of

a very interesting and valuable essay.

2 The most convenient edition of

Addison's Works is that of Bohn, with

Hurd's editorial matter and a good deal

more (London, 6 vols., 1862).

three-and-twenty when at “dearest Harry's” request (that is to

say Mr Harry Sacheverell's) he undertook an Account

of the Best of the greatest English Poets.1 In 1694 nobody, ex-

known English Poets.cept Dryden, could be expected to write very good

verse, so that the poetical qualities of this verse-

essay need not be hardly dwelt upon, or indeed considered

at all. We may take it, as if it were prose, for the matter

only. And thus considered, it must surely be thought one of

the worst examples of the pert and tasteless ignorance of its

school. Before Cowley nobody but Chaucer and Spenser is

mentioned at all, and the mentions of these are simply grotesque.

The lines convict Addison, almost beyond appeal, of being at the

time utterly ignorant of English literary history up to 1600, and

of having read Chaucer and Spenser themselves, if he had read

them at all, with his eyes shut. The Chaucer section reads as

if it were describing A C. Merry Tales or the Jests of George

Peele. Where Dryden, if he did not understand Chaucer's

versification, and missed some of his poetry, could see much even

of that, and almost all the humour, the grace, the sweetness, the

“God's plenty” of life and character that Chaucer has, Addison

sees nothing but a merry-andrew of the day before yesterday.2

So, too, the consummate art of Spenser, his exquisitc versifica-

tion, his great ethical purpose, and yet his voluptuous beauty,

are quite hidden from Addison. He sees nothing but a tedious

allegory of improbable adventures, and objects to the “dull

moral” which “lies too plain below,” much as Temple had

done before him.3 Cowley, Milton, and Waller are mentioned

next, in at least asserted chronological order. Cowley is “a

mighty genius” full of beauties and faults,

“Who more had pleased us had he pleased us less,”

1 It is fair to say that he never

published this, and that, as Pope told

Spence, he used himself to call it “a

poor thing,” and admitted that he

spoke of some of the poets only “on

hearsay.” Now when Pope speaks to

Addison's credit it is not as “what the

soldier said.” It is evidence, and of

the strongest.

2 “In vain he jests in his unpolished

strain,

And tries to make his readers laugh in

vain.”

3 “His moral lay so bare that it lost

the effect” (Ess. on Po., iii. 420, ed. cit.

sup.) Indeed it has been suggested

that Addison's debt to Temple here is

not confined to this.

172

FROM ADDISON TO JOHNSON.

but who is a perfect "milky way" of brilliancy, and has made Pindar himself "take a nobler flight." Milton alternately strikes Addison with awe, rapture, and shock at his politics. He

"Betrays a bottom odious to the sight."

So we turn to Waller, who is not only "courtly" but "moves our passion." (what a pity that he died too soon to "rehearse Maria's charms")! to Roscommon, who "makes even Rules a noble poetry," and Denham, whose Cooper's Hill "we must, of course, not "forget." "Great Dryden" is then, not unhappily, though not quite adequately, celebrated, and the line on his Muse—

"She wears all dresses, and she charms in all,"

is not only neat, but very largely true. When Dryden shall decay, luckily there is harmonious Congreve: and, if Addison were not tired with rhyming, he would praise (he does so at some length) noble Montague, who directs his artful muse to Dorset,

"In numbers such as Dorset's self might use,"—

as to which all that can be said is that, if so, either the verses of Montague or the verses of Dorset referred to are not those that have come down to us under the names of the respective authors.

To dwell at all severely on this luckless production of a young University wit would be not only unkind but uncritical. (It shows that at this time Addison knew next to nothing1 about the English literature not of his own day, and judged very badly of what he pretended to know.

The prose works of his middle period, the Discourse on Medals and the Remarks on Italy, are very fully illustrated from the Latin poets—the division of literature that Addison knew best—but indulge hardly at all in literary criticism. It was not till the launching of the Tatler, by Steele and Swift, provided him with his natural medium of utterance, that

1 He proposes to give an account of "all the Muse possessed" between Chaucer and Dryden; and, as a matter of fact, mentions nobody but Spenser between Chaucer and Cowley.

ADDISON.

173

Addison became critical. This periodical itself, and the less known ones that followed the Spectator, all contain exercises in this character: but it is to the Spectator that men look, and look rightly, for Addison’s credentials in the character of a critic. The Tatler Essays, such as the rather well known papers on Tom Folio and Ned Softly, those in the Guardian, the good-natured puff of Tom D’Urfey, &c, are not so much serious and deliberate literary criticisms, as applications, to subjects more or less literary, of the peculiar method of gently malicious censorship, of laughing castigation in manners and morals, which Addison carried to such perfection in all the middle relations of life. Not only are the Spectator articles far more numerous and far more weighty, but we have his own authority for regarding them as, in some measure at least, written on a deliberate system, and divisible into three groups. The first of these groups consists of the early papers on True and False Wit, and of essays on the stage. The second contains the famous and elaborate criticism of Milton with other things; and the third, the still later, still more serious, and still more ambitious, series on the Pleasures of the Imagination. Addison is looking back from the beginning of this last when he gives the general description,1 and it is quite possible that the complete trilogy was not in his mind when he began the first group. But there is regular development in it, and whether we agree or not with Mr Worsfold’s extremely high estimate of the third division, it is quite certain that the whole collection—of some thirty or forty essays—does clearly exhibit that increasing sense of what criticism means, which is to be observed in almost all good critics. For criticism is, on the one hand, an art in which there are so few manuals or trustworthy short summaries —it is one which depends so much more on reading and knowledge than any creative art—and, above all, it is necessary to make so many mistakes in it before one comes right, that,

1 In the last paragraph of Sp. 409. The whole paper has been occupied by thoughts on Taste and Criticism : it contains the excellent comparison of a

critic to a tea-taster, and it ends with this retrospect, and the promise of the “ Imagination ” Essays (v. ed. cit., iii. 393).

174

FROM ADDISON TO JOHNSON.

probably, not one single example can be found of a critic of

importance who was not a much better critic when he left off

than when he began.

In Group One ¹ Addison is still animated by the slightly

desultory spirit of moral satire, which has been referred to

On True and above ; and, though fifteen or sixteen years have

False Wit. passed since the Account, he does not seem to be

so entirely free as we might wish from the crude sciolism,

if not the sheer ignorance, of the earliest period. He is

often admirable: his own humour, his taste, almost perfect

within its own narrow limits, and his good sense, made that

certain beforehand. But he has somewhat overloaded it with

unduly artificial allegory, the ethical temper rather over-

powers the literary, and there is not a little of that arbitrary

"blackmarking" of certain literary things which is one of the

worst faults of neo-classic criticism. The Temple of Dulness

is built (of course) "after the Gothic manner," and the image of

the god is dressed "after the habit of a monk." Among the

idolatrous rites and implements are not merely rebuses, ana-

grams, verses arranged in artificial forms, and other things a

little childish, though perfectly harmless, but acrostics—trifles

perhaps, yet trifles which can be made exquisitely graceful

and satisfying that desire for mixing passion with playful-

ness which is not the worst affection of the human heart.

He had led up to this batch, a few weeks earlier, by some

cursory remarks on Comedy, which form the tail of a more

elaborate examination of Tragedy, filling four or five

On Tragedy. numbers.² Readers who have already mastered the

general drift of the criticism of the time before him, will

scarcely need any long précis of his views, which, moreover, are

in everybody's reach, and could not possibly be put more

readably. Modern tragedies, he thinks, excel those of Greece

and Rome in the intricacy and disposition of the fable, but

fall short in the moral. He objects to rhyme (except an end-

couplet or two), and, though he thinks the style of our tragedies

superior to the sentiment, finds the former, especially in

Shakespeare, defaced by "sounding phrases, hard metaphors,

¹ Sp. 58-63.

² Sp. 39, 40, 42, 44, 45.

and forced expressions." This is still more the case in Lee. Otway is very "tender": but it is a sad thing that the

characters in Venice Preserved should be traitors and rebels. Poetic justice (this was what shocked Dennis), as generally

understood, is rather absurd, and quite unnecessary. And the tragi-comedy, which is the product of the English theatre, is

"one of the most monstrous inventions that ever entered into a poet's thought." You "might as well weave the adventures of

Æneas and Hudibras into one poem " [and, indeed, one might find some relief in this, as far as the adventures of Æneas are

concerned]. Tragedies are not even to have a double plot. Rants, and especially impious rants, are bad. Darkened stages,

elaborate scenery and dresses, troops of supers, &c., are as bad : bells, ghosts, thunder, and lightning still worse. "Of all our

methods of moving pity and terror, there is none so absurd and barbarous as the dreadful butchering of one another," though

all deaths on the stage are not to be forbidden.

Now, it is not difficult to characterise the criticism which appears in this first group, strengthened, if anybody cares, by a

few isolated examples. It contains a great deal of common sense and good ordinary taste; many of the things that it

reprehends are really wrong, and most of what it praises is good in a way. But the critic has as yet no guiding theory,

except what he thinks he has gathered from Aristotle, and has certainly gathered from Horace, plus Common Sense itself,

with, as is the case with all English critics of this age, a good deal from his French predecessors, especially Le Bossu and

Bouhours. Which borrowing, while it leads him into numerous minor errors, leads him into two great ones—his denunciations

of tragi-comedy, and of the double plot. He is, moreover, essentially arbitrary : his criticism will seldom stand the ap-

plication of the "Why?" the "Après?" and a harsh judge might, in some places, say that it is not more arbitrary than ignorant.

The Second Group,1 or Miltonic batch, with which may be

1 These began in Sp. 267, and were in the excellent index of the ed. cit. or

the regular Saturday feature of the paper for many weeks. References to Milton outside of them will be found

in that of Mr Gregory Smith's exact and elegant reproduction of the Spectator (8 vols., London, 1897).

176

FROM ADDISON TO JOHNSON.

taken its "moon," the partly playful but more largely serious

examen of Chevy Chase, is much the best known, and

On Milton. has been generally ranked as the most important

exhibition of Addison's critical powers. It is not, however, out

of paradox or desire to be singular that it will be somewhat

briefly discussed here. By the student of Addison it cannot be

too carefully studied; for the historian of criticism it has indeed

high importance, but importance which can be very briefly

summed up, and which requires no extensive analysis of the

eighteen distinct essays that compose the Miltonic group, or

the two on Chevy Chase. The critic here takes for granted—

and knows or assumes that his readers will grant—two general

positions:—

1. The Aristotelian-Horatian view of poetry, with a few of

the more commonplace utterances of Longinus, supplies the

orthodox theory of Poetics.

2. The ancients, especially Homer and Virgil, supply the most

perfect examples of the orthodox practice of poetry.

These things posed, he proceeds to examine Chevy Chase at

some, Paradise Lost at great, length by their aid; and dis-

covers in the ballad not a few, and in the epic very great and

very numerous, excellences. As Homer does this, so Milton

does that: such a passage in Virgil is a more or less exact

analogue to such another in Paradise Lost. Aristotle says this,

Horace that, Longinus the third thing; and you will find the

dicta capitally exemplified in such and such a place of Milton's

works. To men who accepted the principle—as most, if not all,

men did—the demonstration was no doubt both interesting and

satisfactory; and though it certainly did not start general ad-

miration of Milton, it stamped that admiration with a comfort-

able seal of official orthodoxy. But it is actually more anti-

quated than Dryden, in assuming that the question whether

Milton wrote according to Aristotle is coextensive with the

question whether he wrote good poetry.

The next batch is far more important.

What are the Pleasures of the Imagination? It is of the

first moment to observe Addison's exact definition.1 Sight is

1 Sp. 411, ed. cit., iii. 394.

the "sense which furnishes the imagination with its ideas; so

that by the 'Pleasures of the Imagination' or

The

"Pleasures Fancy, which I shall use promiscuously, I here

of the mean such as arise from visible objects, either when

Imagination." we have them actually in our view, or when we call

up their ideas into our minds by paintings, statues, descriptions,

or any the like occasion." We can have no images not thus

furnished, though they may be altered and compounded by

imagination itself. To make this quite sure, he repeats that he

means only such pleasures as thus arise. He then proceeds, at

some length, to argue for the innocence and refinement of such

pleasures, their usefulness, and so on; and further, to discuss

the causes or origins of pleasure in sight, which he finds to be

three—greatness, uncommonness, and beauty. The pleasant-

ness of these is assigned to such and such wise and good

purposes of the Creator, with a reference to the great modern

discoveries of Mr Locke's Essay.

Addison then goes on to consider the sources of entertain-

ment to the imagination, and decides that, for the purpose, art

is very inferior to nature, though both rise in value as each

borrows from the other. He adduces, in illustration, an odd

rococo mixture of scene-painting and reflection of actual objects

which he once saw (p. 404). Italian and French gardens are

next praised, in opposition to the old formal English style, and

naturally trained trees to the productions of the ars topiaria;

while a very long digression is made to greatness in Architec-

ture, illustrated by this remark (p. 409), "Let any one reflect on

the disposition of mind in which he finds himself at his first

entrance into the Pantheon at Rome, . . . and consider how

little in proportion he is affected with the inside of a Gothic

cathedral, though it be five times larger than the other," the

reason being "the greatness of the manner in the one, and the

meanness in the other."

So the "secondary" pleasures of the imagination—i.e., those

compounded and manufactured by memory—are illustrated by

the arts of sculpture and painting, with a good passage on

description generally, whence he turns to the Cartesian doctrine

of the association of ideas, and shows very ingeniously how the

M

178

FROM ADDISON TO JOHNSON.

poet may avail himself of this. Next comes a curious and often

just analysis of the reasons of pleasure in description—how, for

instance, he likes Milton’s Paradise better than his Hell, be-

cause brimstone and sulphur are not so refreshing to the

imagination as beds of flowers and wildernesses of sweets.

Or we may like things because they “raise a secret ferment

in the mind,” either directly, or so as to arouse a feeling of relief

by comparison, as when we read of tortures, wounds, and deaths.

Moreover, the poet may improve Nature. Let oranges grow

wild, and roses, woodbines, and jessamines flower at the same

time. As for “the fairy way of writing”1—that is to say, the

supernatural—it requires a very odd turn of mind. We do it

better than most other nations, because of our gloominess and

melancholy of temper. Shakespeare excels everybody else in

touching “this weak superstitious part” of his reader’s imagina-

tion. The glorifying of the imagination, however, is by no means

confined to the poet. In good historians we “see” everything.

None more gratify the imagination than the authors of the

new philosophy, astronomers, microscopists. This (No. 420) is

one of Addison’s most ambitious passages of writing, and the

whole ends (421) with a peroration excellently hit off.

(It is upon these papers mainly that Mr Worsfold2 bases

his high eulogium of Addison as “the first genuine critic,” the

first “who added something to the last word of Hellenism,”

the bringer of criticism “into line with modern thought,” the

establisher of “a new principle of poetic appeal.” Let us, as

uncontroversially as possible, and without laying any undue

stress on the fact that Mr Worsfold practically omits Longinus

altogether,3 stick, in our humdrum way, to the facts.

In the first place, supposing for the moment that Addison

uses “imagination” in our full modern sense, and supposing,

secondly, for the moment also, thathe assigns the appeal to the

imagination as the special engine of the poet, is this an original

discovery of his ? By no means: there are many loci of former

1 This phrase is originally Dryden’s

pp. 55-93.

(dedication to King Arthur, viii. 136,

ed. cit.), who, however, has “kind”

for “way.”

2 Op. cit., pp. 93-107, and more largely

3 Students of the Stagirite may be

almost equally surprised to find Aris-

totle regarded as mainly, if not wholly,

a critic of Form as opposed to Thought.

writers to negative this—there is one that is fatal. And this

is no more recondite a thing than the famous Shakespearian

description of

"The lunatic, the lover, and the poet,"

as

"Of imagination all compact,"

with what follows. But this is a mere question of property,

plagiarism, suggestion ; and such questions are at best the exer-

cises of literary holiday-makers, at the worst the business of

pedants and of fools.

A more important as well as a more dangerous question is

this. Does Addison make "the appeal to the imagination" the

test of poetry ? It can only be answered that, by his own

explicit words, he does nothing of the kind. If he advances

anything, it is that the appeal to the imagination is the appeal

of art generally—of prose (even of scientific) literary art as well

as of poetry, of painting, sculpture, architecture, as well as of

literature. In doing this he does a good thing: he does some-

thing notable in the history of general æsthetics ; but in so far

as literature, and especially poetry, is concerned, he scarcely

goes as far as Longinus in the well-known passage,1 though he

works out his doctrine at much greater length, and with assist-

ance from Descartes and Locke.

But the most important and the most damaging question of

all is this, "Are not Addison and his panegyrist using words in

equivocal senses ? Does Imagination in Addison's mouth bear

the meaning which we, chiefly since Coleridge's day, attach to

the word ? Does it even mean what it meant to Longinus,

much more what it meant to Shakespeare ?"

I have no hesitation in answering the two latter questions

with an absolute and unhesitating "No!"

It seems indeed extraordinary that, in face of Addison's

most careful and explicit limitations, any one should delude

himself into thinking that even the Shakespearian and Addi-

sonian Imaginations are identical—much more that Addison's

Imagination is the supreme faculty, creative, transcending

1 De Sublimitate, cap. xv.